Lemon by Kwon Yeo-sun

 

Lemon by Kwon Yeo-sun.

Translated by Janet Hong.

Published 14th October 2201 by Head of Zeus.

From the cover of the book:

Parasite meets The Good Son in this piercing psychological portrait of three women haunted by a brutal, unsolved crime.

In the summer of 2002, nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold.

Seventeen years pass without justice, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she's lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened.

Shifting between the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on's classmates struck in different ways by her otherworldly beauty, Lemon ostensibly takes the shape of a crime novel. But identifying the perpetrator is not the main objective here: Kwon Yeo-sun uses this well-worn form to craft a searing, timely exploration of privilege, jealousy, trauma, and how we live with the wrongs we have endured and inflicted in turn.

*************************

In the summer of 2002, the brutal murder of a nineteen-year-old high school student Kim Hae-on pushes all news of the FIFA World Cup off the front pages. What was to become known in South Korea as the High School Beauty Murder was never solved, although two suspects from the victim's high school caught the attention of the police - Shin Jeongjun the son of wealthy, influential parents, who saw her last, but appeared to have an incontrovertible alibi; and Han Manu the son of a poor single mother whose account of what he saw that day was full of contradictions, though his involvement in the murder could never be proven.

Time passes and the focus of the public moves on to other attention grabbing headlines, but for the people who knew Hae-on it is not so easy to pick up the threads of their lives. In particular, Hae-on's sister Da-on finds it impossible to get over the loss of her beautiful older sister. Her coping strategies are psychologically and even physically damaging, and she cannot rest until she knows the truth, leading her to undertake her own unorthodox investigation into what really happened that day.

As time jumps forward, and Da-on's off-beat search for justice plays out in fits and starts, we come to fully understand the impact that the loss of her sister has had not only on her and her mother, but two of Hae-on's female classmates who have also been profoundly affected by her death, though not necessarily in the way that you might imagine - and even the suspects themselves.

Lemon is the most unconventional of crime novels, because it is less about the search for a murderer and much more about the fall-out of the event on the people left behind, whether they be family, friends, foes, or suspects in the case. As Kwon Yeo-sun takes us inside the heads of Da-on and Hae-on's classmates, through their reflections upon the way their lives have been shaped by her death, and intriguingly what they know about the events of that day and what followed, she serves to lead us on an insightful journey into what makes up the fabric of Korean society - especially how status and wealth influence the perception of guilt. Throw in the scattered pieces of the puzzle that Da-on uncovers through the friendship she develops with one of the suspects and his family, and you end up with a searing look at grief, jealousy, the search for connection and self-validation, and what motivates people to undertake ill-judged deeds.

If you prefer your stories to flow in a logical way and for all the threads to be tied up nicely at the end then this book is not for you, but if you are willing to immerse yourself completely in a shifting text with narratives that burst with emotion, and flow in a rambling stream of consciousness way, so it is not always obvious from first glance who is speaking, then this book is absolute gold.

As murder-mysteries go this is not the easiest one to solve, especially since the intentions of the author lie in other directions, and the victim herself remains an enigma throughout the whole book, but for me the clues you need are all there, sprinkled among the orgy of information presented to you as a reader. I think this is one of the most rewarding books I have read in that regard, because you are required to look between the lines of the multiple points of view to find what you need - and interestingly, even though there is no gratifying moment where the perpetrator of the crime is locked-away behind bars, there is still a reckoning of sorts that is darkly satisfying in an old testament eye-for-an-eye sort of way.

At only 148 pages, this book packs a mighty literary punch, and the translation by Janet Hong is certainly impressive in the way it preserves a haunting quality to the piece. This is the kind of book that you will find yourself reading more than once, and will gain something new each time you do, even if you find the truth of the case unfathomable. It is undeniably a sad tale about injustice and overpowering loss, but it will give you a lot to think about in the way that novels filled with veiled meaning and deep symbolism from the Orient often do. I loved it and cannot wait to read more contemporary work from South Korea.

Lemon is available to buy now in hardback, ebook and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Head of Zeus for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author and translator:

Kwon Yeo-sun is an award-winning Korean writer. She has won the Sangsang Literary Award, Oh Yeongsu Literature Award, Yi Sang Literary Prize, Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, Tong-ni Literature Prize and Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award. Lemon is her first novel to be published in the English language.

Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She received the TA First Translation Prize and the LTI Korea Translation Award for her translation of Han Yujoo's The Impossible Fairy Tale, which was also a finalist for both the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award. Her recent translations include Ha Seong-nan's Bluebeard's First Wife, Ancco's Nineteen, and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's Grass.