10 S UNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021
KIM HAE-ON ISbeautiful, young, female —
and dead. It is the summer of 2002, the
FIFA World Cup draws to a close and Hae-
on’s body is discovered in the flower bed of
a park in Seoul.
At first glance, Kwon Yeo-sun’s “Lemon”
appears to be your typical whodunit; much
of its first chapter is dedicated to an inter-
view between detective and suspect. But
then Kwon directs the reader’s attention
elsewhere. Yes, by the end, the reader will
know who the killer is, but that knowledge
takes a back seat in this poignant tale.
A taut novella in eight vignettes, “Lem-
on” is not so much narrated as spilled, con-
fessed, blurted out in the alternating
voices of three women recalling a tragedy
that took place when they were in high
school. The first and most central of these
is Da-on, Hae-on’s younger sister.
Da-on and her mother cope with their
loss in bizarre ways, their grief awkward
and somewhat hopeless. Hae-on’s mother
goes to great lengths to change the name of
her dead daughter back to her birth name,
Hye-eun, for “she seemed to think my sis-
ter’s life had gone wrong because of the
name change.” And in her own warped
tribute, Da-on undergoes plastic surgery
in order to more closely resemble her stun-
ning dead sister.
Hae-on’s good looks are praised
throughout, Kwon relying heavily on the
literary motif of the comely, virginal vic-
tim. As with many of the slain fictional
women who came before her, the specter of
Hae-on is profoundly romanticized, her de-
mise all the more tragic because of how at-
tractive she was. “My sister was beautiful,”
Da-on says. “Unforgettably so. She was
perfection, bliss personified. But more
than anything, she was at that mythical
age: 18. Who dared destroy her lovely
form?”
The second narrator, Hae-on’s classmate
Sanghui, admits that there wasn’t much to
say about Hae-on beyond her “absolute,
staggering beauty.” She contrasts this with
her warm memories of Da-on, who
“brimmed with passion and curiosity. She
was pleasant and savvy in all her dealings,
but most of all, she laughed more than any-
one.” Da-on addresses Sanghui as “eonni”
— a term reserved for older women and
girls whom one feels closest to, and it is
through Sanghui’s lens that we witness
Da-on’s stark physical and mental trans-
formations.
Da-on’s grief is twofold: She mourns the
loss of Hae-on even as she asks herself if
she ever loved her aloof, unreadable sister.
“She did nothing and thought nothing,” Da-
on thinks. “She considered no one and
harmed no one.” When Da-on finally resur-
faces from a period of grieving she de-
scribes as “plummeting down a deep well,”
her first desire is for revenge. She seeks
out the prime suspect, a man named Han
Manu, and finds a life riddled with tragedy.
Yun Taerim, the third narrator and an-
other classmate of Hae-on’s, is a woman
saddled with a secret. She tries to unbur-
den herself via staccato yet rambling
monologues, unable to say the one thing
that might free her. She teases the reader
with information and then flip-flops like a
fish on a slab.
Kwon takes advantage of the multiple
perspectives at her disposal. What one
narrator sees as a kindness, another
shows to be an act of necessity; what one
assumes is solicitation is later revealed to
be reckless. To Sanghui, it is amusing how
Da-on would inspect her sister’s uniform
every day while her own blouse was
stained; later Da-on explains that she had
to be diligent because Hae-on often forgot
to put on underwear. These “discoveries”
are for the reader’s benefit. As is some-
times the case in life, the narrators are
never disabused of the notions they hold.
They exist more as vehicles through
which the story is told than as flesh-and-
blood individuals. A reader would be hard
pressed to pinpoint their internal at-
tributes or quirks. But the story is told so
vividly and poetically that it doesn’t suffer
much for this lack of insight.
“Lemon” is easy to devour in one sitting,
but my advice is: Don’t. I was so focused on
the murder that I almost missed another
mystery unfolding right before my eyes.
“Lemon” should be read slowly and closely
in order to appreciate it when Kwon pulls
off what I can describe only as a sleight of
hand. She plants bread crumbs that re-
ward the attentive reader, and make for an
especially enjoyable second read. Fortu-
nately, it is short enough to begin all over
again.
An expansion on Kwon’s 2016 short story
“You Do Not Know,” “Lemon” is the South
Korean author’s first book to be published
in English. In Janet Hong’s translation,
Kwon’s writing is masterly. Her sentences
are crisp, concise and potent; just one con-
tains as much meaning as two or three of
your average storyteller’s. Da-on recalls
her father’s frustration at a broken ciga-
rette exquisitely: “After living a mundane,
dull life, where a trivial incident like this
was cause enough for him to become an-
gry, he died.” Her hypnotic effect will stay
with the reader long after the last page has
been read. You’ll wish there were more;
but you’ll be grateful it ended as it did.
“Lemon,” much like the fruit, is a bright,
intense, refreshing story. 0
The Virgin Homicides
A novella revisits an 18-year-old girl’s murder from three biased perspectives.
By OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE
LEMON
By Kwon Yeo-sun
Translated by Janet Hong
147 pp. Other Press. $20.
PING ZHU
I was so focused on the murder
that I almost missed another
mystery before my eyes.
OYINKAN BRAITHWAITEis the author of “My
Sister, the Serial Killer.”
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