Focusing on the unsolved murder of teenage girl, this literary crime novel offers insights into gender, class and privilege in Seoul, and marks the English-language debut for award-winning Korean author, Kwon Yeo-sun.
'A haunting literary crime story ... Razor-sharp observations of class, gender and privilege in contemporary Korea' CosmopolitanIn 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.Told at different points in time from the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on's classmates, Lemon is a piercing psychological portrait that takes the shape of a crime novel and is a must-read novel of 2021.
-'With taut, steely prose, Kwon burrows into the details surrounding the shocking murder of a beautiful girl. Though Lemon takes the form of a mystery and there's psychological suspense that will grip you all the way to the end, it isn't just a whodunnit. Hidden on every page are explorations of grief and guilt, how one should go on after a tragedy. It jolts with its brilliance and tartness. It's simply electric' Kyung-sook Shin, author of Please Look After Mother
A beguiling exploration of a terrible crime
Lemon is a beguiling exploration on the long-term effects of a terrible crime on several individuals connected to the victim: her younger sister, a classmate, a romantic rival and the man falsely accused of the crime. It transpires that one of those individuals may actually be the murderer, who has gone unidentified and unpunished - by the law at least - for almost 20 years.
On the last night of June 2002, when South Korea is at the peak of its national fervour while co-hosting the (soccer) World Cup, 19-year-old student Kim Hae-on is brutally murdered, devastating her family and those who loved her.
Hae-on was stunningly beautiful but seems, according to her sister's description, to have been neurodivergent to some degree and hence more vulnerable than other young women her age. While a suspect was identified soon after her death, nobody has ever been prosecuted and what happened to Hae-on remains a mystery to those who remember her.
The direction of Hae-on's surviving younger sister, Da-on's life has been significantly influenced by her sister's untimely death, and she has taken some rather extreme measures in the course of dealing with her grief and attempting to exact her vengeance on the person(s) responsible. Four of the eight chapters of the novella are related from Da-on's perspective and give the reader glimpses of her unusual relationship with her late sister, on how she processes her grief and rage, and how she takes action in an effort to right past wrongs.
The alternating chapters are told from two alternate perspectives. First, that of Sanghui Eonni, a former classmate of Hae-on's, who also knew Da-on and encounters her on a couple of occasions in the years after the murder. His recollections have the character of an objective observer - he admired Hae-on's beauty, but was never particularly close to her. Secondly, we encounter two one-sided phone conversations in which the speaker is Yun Taerim. She was also a former classmate of Hae-on's, and a beautiful young woman in her own right, but was jealous of the admiration Hae-on received from mutual romantic interests, in particular golden boy Shin Jeongjun, in whose car Hae-on was last seen.
As the narrative unfolds, and Da-on confronts Han Manu, the unfortunate witness who was unfairly accused of the murder in 2002, the reader comes to a realisation around where the actual culpability for Hae-on's death lies.
There's an rawness to the prose, which effectively highlights the trauma from which several of the characters suffer. Kwon Yeo-Sun' s depiction of sensory experience is exquisite and her exploration of the long-ranging emotional toll Hae-on's death has had on the protagonists is nuanced and sensitive. A few passages sounded a little clunky when read in English, but as I don't speak Korean, I can't say whether this reflects on Kwon Yeo-Sun's own writing style or on the quality of translation. I found the novella's structure - both the multiple perspectives and the multiple time-points - a powerful means of exploring the various themes and characterisations.
I'd recommend Lemon to readers of literary fiction and/or psychological mystery who seek to challenge themselves with something a little different. Having experienced the book both via an e-book and by listening to the RB Media audiobook version, I can confirm that the latter, featuring the voices of Greta Jung, Jaine Ye and Greg Chun, is a well-rendered interpretation suited to the multi-narrator format.
Sarah, 15/10/2021
