Lemon
by Kwon Yeo-Sun
translated by Janet Hong
Readers of my blog will know how much I like genre
fiction, especially if it does something different with the tropes readers
would expect. Lemon, by Korean novelist Kwon Yeo-Sun, is just such a book. It is ostensibly a thriller
in which Da-on, the protagonist (and one of the novel’s three narrators), tries
to solve the mystery of the brutal murder of her nineteen-year-old sister Kim
Hae-on during the heady days of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, jointly hosted by
Korea and Japan.
It is no spoiler to reveal that by the end of the book we do not really get a tidy solution to the whodunnit, although there are enough clues to invite us to reach our own conclusions. What we do get is a darkly humorous and often unexpectedly moving exploration of loss and grief. We learn of the long-lasting ripples which the murder has on the life of the individuals closest to the tragedy, particularly Kim Hae-on’s family (especially Da-on, who feels she must honour her sister’s memory and fill the void left by her death) and delivery boy Han Manu, who is one of the last persons to see Hae-on alive and is long considered to be the prime suspect. Da-on’s narrative alternates with that of two Hae-on’s and Da-on’s ex-schoolmates.
At just under two hundred pages, Lemon is a quick and often entertaining read, even if it does not flinch from staring into the face of death, illness and injustice. Janet Hong’s translation is crisp and flowing.
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