Lemon.

Kwon Yeo-Sun’s novella Lemon made a slew of best-of lists last year, from most-anticipated to top novels of 2021, for its unusual, incisive treatment of what might otherwise have been an ordinary murder mystery. Set in 2002, as the World Cup that took place in South Korea and Japan was coming to a close, Lemon examines the brutal murder of a beautiful high school student and the impact it had on her family, friends, the suspects, and others, while only partially unwrapping the mystery of who actually killed her.

Written through the perspective of three women who knew the victim, Hae-on, Lemon defies the conventions of the modern literary mystery, where a murder or other horrific crime defines the story’s structure and its solution must inform the ending of the book. Da-on is Hae-on’s younger sister, but was the more worldly of the two, often taking care of Hae-on when the older girl seemed ill-equipped to handle reality, forgetting even the most basic personal tasks; after Hae-on’s death, Da-on reacts in increasingly hysterical ways, including undergoing plastic surgery to try to resemble her dead sister. Taerim is the girlfriend of one of the two main suspects in the murder, and her sections are written as her halves of conversations with a suicide prevention line and a psychiatrist, and it becomes clear that she knows more than she has let on. She marries that suspect in question, but their life is shattered by a subsequent tragedy with a subtle connection to the original murder. Sanghui was a new student and classmate of Hae-on and plays the part of the demos from Greek tragedies, standing in for the audience (or the reader) and observing the story as a third party. Within all of these is the possible answer to the mystery, the obliquely described revenge plot Da-on takes on who she believes is the killer, and a powerful exploration of grief and the lack of meaning in this senseless death.

Kwon has won multiple literary awards in her native Korea, but this is her first work to be translated into English, which may explain some of the rapturous praise for Lemon – it’s our first exposure to her voice and style, even though she’s been publishing works in Korean for more than a quarter-century. She weaves poetry into the story, and her prose writing often has the metaphorical quality of poetry, with descriptions that leave the reader feeling like they’re looking at the story from an angle that leaves it shrouded in mist. There are recurring images and symbols, including the lemons of the title, and frequent mention of the color yellow, such as the dress the victim was supposedly wearing on the night of her murder, and meditative passages on appearance and identity or the meaning (or lack thereof) of life.

What the book doesn’t do, and what might frustrate a lot of readers, is give you a clear answer to the murder. The first chapter of the novella’s eight, each of which takes place in a different year, sets up what appears to be the plot of a literary mystery, with a police interrogation of one of those two suspects where the cop tries to coerce a confession, but Kwon defies any of those expectations afterwards. You just have to go with it, and what I believe is the answer is buried within other text without anything definitive, so you might miss it and you certainly don’t get the Big Confession that modern book culture has led us to expect. It’s a good ride because it challenges your reading mind, but if you need clear and unequivocal answers, it’s going to leave you frustrated.

Next up: I just finished Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize-winning book The Line of Beauty.