My friend Lisa from MoreSouth - http://moresouth.com/blog/ - asked me to comment on her
blog about lemons. So here goes. Thanks Lisa.
Lemons are very much on my mind at the moment. The lemon
plays a major role in my work-in-progress novel 'Honey Lemon'. To one of the
central characters - Inez - lemons are sacrosanct! To Inez the lemon symbolizes hope, life,
vitality; it symbolizes sun. Inez sees her lemon tree as her protector against
all things evil. Inez feels her life in 2013 Spain is falling apart. She clings
to hope for better things for the future. She is young and without
qualifications. She works in a low-paid job. Her problems are those faced by so
many of her friends.
Then she meets Luis. Both she and Luis are young Cubans,
living in Barcelona. Both work in menial jobs with no prospects; both have lost
hope that they’ll ever have a better future. They are strangers to each other
and feel adrift in a modern Europe gripped by recession.
Apart from their nationality, they have one thing in common;
Ines sings to her lemon tree each morning before she goes to work at the bakery
deliciós close to Gracia, believing her lemon tree holds the secret to her
existence. Luis, a porter at the Hotel Central close to the Ramblas, is
addicted to the taste of organic honey. He worships honey and saves as much of
his low pay as he can afford to buy the best he can. Both feel lost in the
midst of menial work, low pay, struggle, disconnection, loneliness and fear.
One cold February morning, Ines and Luis meet. They become
friends, then lovers, and over the coming weeks challenge each other to find
out the reason for their love affair with the lemon tree and organic honey.
What they discover surprises them. They discover not only a common heritage, a
joint past, a new hope for living and the key to a life full of promise, they
discover love and connection with their own history and within that the reason
for their own being.
'Honey Lemon' is a simple love story about connecting with
our ancestors and living true to your dreams.
I wanted to write a novel about symbols, about simple things
that inspire us, about the disconnection many of us feel with what is truly
important. That's one of the reasons why I love Lisa and Haim's business
MoreSouth – which is about the simple, yet powerful act, of eating beautiful
food, and nothing feeds the spirit and soul more than delicious food shared
with family and friends xxx.
No comments:
Post a Comment