Title: Last Night Author: Brendan Lemon Publisher: Alyson John Webster, an American citizen, is locked up in a Cuban jail facing execution the next day. His mind is wandering back through the paths that have led him to that point, and so he begins to narrate an elegy for the dead love that has led him here. Webster’s tale takes the reader back to where Webster first met Eduardo, the cute son of a Cuban diplomat, at an Embassy dinner and from there we’re given the grand tour of a doomed romance that culminates in the two fleeing a crime scene in havana, only to be caught up in the mechanisms of a bureaucracy far more complicated and troubled than either of them suspected. That’s the premise of Lemon’s first novel, and as an idea, it works well - the series of flashbacks that allow for the story to progress are suited to Lemon’s style, and he handles them with grace. Where Last Night begins to falter however is in the details. Although Lemon freely admits that he has never visited Cuba and has therefore gleamed his descriptions from other novels, this seems a somewhat-weak explanation for errors such as using the Greek “putana”, rather than the Spanish “puta”, when one of the characters calls another a whore. The criticisms of the Cuban justice system inherent in the novel seem messy and perhaps more personal knowledge of the situation would have assisted in adding to its credibility. Lemon is I think well aware of the limitations - his New York comes to life far better than the Cuba glimpsed on the road trip, and again, to his credit, although the novel draws it surroundings from a jail cell out, the text moves quickly enough for most readers not to become preoccupied with any jolting discrepancies. In short, Last Night is a lyrical, occasionally florid, exploration of the distances between romance and love, the issues caused by cultural expectations and the interplay between memory and actuality. For a debut work, it’s confident and structurally sound, and Lemon shows real promise. Though Last Night doesn’t quite cut it for me, it would be revealing to read more of his writings on his native city New York, to see what stories he could draw from the hyper-urban scapes he inhabits and I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.