{"id":5573,"date":"2021-11-27T16:37:17","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T00:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5573"},"modified":"2021-11-27T16:37:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T00:37:52","slug":"korea-blog-kwon-yeo-suns-korean-millennial-murder-mystery-lemon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5573","title":{"rendered":"Korea Blog: Kwon Yeo-sun\u2019s Korean-millennial murder mystery Lemon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/center><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A murder mystery can end either resolved or unresolved. Most writers opt for the former, if only out of habit or crowd-pleasing instinct, though some habitually leave ends just loose enough to lead to a sequel. In the absence of any resolution, a novel\u2019s very status as a murder mystery comes into doubt. It tends not to be described as belonging to the genre, but as using its elements \u2014 or, imprecisely, as \u201cdeconstructing\u201d it. Reviewers of Kwon Yeo-sun\u2019s Lemon <\/em>(\ub808\ubaac), newly published in Janet Hong\u2019s English translation, disagree about whether its central mystery is fully resolved. One could make a fair case either way, to my mind, but in this lack of a resolution over whether it even contains a resolution \u2014 its meta-unresolvedness, if you like \u2014 lies a clue to the source of its power, which critics have variously but unanimously praised.<\/p>

The murder in Lemon<\/em> is that of an eighteen-year-old girl named Kim Hae-on, the enchantress of her high school. \u201cHer beauty seemed not of this world, a kind you rarely encountered,\u201d remembers a former classmate who narrates certain chapters. After a glimpse of Hae-on\u2019s face, \u201cthe classroom seemed to have transformed into a fictional, perhaps magical, place.\u201d As for her body, it later turns up lifeless in a park, bearing evidence of blunt force trauma to the head. Her underwear is also missing, seemingly not the work of her attacker \u2014 \u201cthe autopsy didn\u2019t reveal any traces of rape or sexual assault\u201d \u2014 but the result of her own lifelong carelessness about matters of dress. \u201cBefore stepping out of the house, I stood her before me and circled her, checking her uniform to make sure she hadn\u2019t forgotten anything,\u201d recalls her younger sister Da-on.<\/p>

Apart from her defining (though vaguely sketched) looks, Hae-on comes across as in no way especially appealing. \u201cIt seemed she didn\u2019t think about anything,\u201d says Da-on. \u201cShe did nothing and thought nothing. She considered no one and harmed no one. She wasn\u2019t interested in anyone nor bothered by anyone.\u201d When hungry \u201cshe became incapable of empathy, of putting herself in someone else\u2019s shoes, and hardly considered another person or the smallest etiquette.\u201d She \u201cseemed like an animal then, or even worse a sociopath, someone who could easily take a piece of bread from a starving child or elderly person.\u201d Somehow, Hae-on\u2019s less than fully human \u2014 or simply other than fully human \u2014 behavior hasn\u2019t drawn more comparisons to Han Kang\u2019s acclaimed The Vegetarian<\/em> (\ucc44\uc2dd\uc8fc\uc758\uc790), which also features an inert woman, withdrawn from human affairs, her actions relayed through the interpretations of others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Read the whole thing at the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A murder mystery can end either resolved or unresolved. Most writers opt for the former, if only out of habit or crowd-pleasing instinct, though some habitually leave ends just loose enough to lead to a sequel. In the absence of any resolution, a novel\u2019s very status as a murder mystery comes into doubt. It tends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-korea-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5577,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions\/5577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}