LEMON

A taut Korean novel examines the aftershocks of murder.

Kwon's first novel to be translated into English begins in 2002 with the death of 18-year-old Kim Hae-on, preternaturally beautiful but not universally admired. At first, the police suspect both inarticulate delivery boy Han Manu, who seems to know too much about Hae-on's last day, and smooth, wealthy fellow student Shin Jeongjun, who gave her a ride in his car the night before she was found bludgeoned to death in a flower bed. Both, however, have alibis. The case remains unsolved as years go by, and the lives of the two men are shaped by the suspicions that have arisen around them. Kwon, meanwhile, switches her attention to three young women. Hae-on's younger sister, Da-on, described as “short and dumpy,” falls into a depression and undergoes a series of plastic surgeries, “turning my own face into a crude patchwork of her features.” Yun Taerum, whose “crimson lips and almond-shaped eyes” made her the second-most-beautiful girl in Hae-on's class, falls apart, as evidenced by a series of one-sided conversations with a telephone counseling service. Sanghui, a transfer student who only knew Hae-on for a few months, is fascinated by the murder but not so personally involved. Kwon's brief, fierce novel takes daring leaps through time, landing on the disturbed consciousness of one character or another and leaving the reader to fill in the gaps of the narrative. While the murderer is never explicitly revealed, most readers will have no problem making an educated guess. Kwon is less concerned with assigning blame than with taking a detached view of the psychological stresses experienced by her characters.

A chilling examination of the repercussions of violence.