Lemon

By: Kwon Yeo-Sun

Narrated by: Greta Jung, Jaine Ye, Greg Chun

This is not a murder story. It is the story of those left behind.

Parasite meets The Good Son in this piercing psychological portrait of three women haunted by a brutal, unsolved crime.

In the summer of 2002, 19-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold.

Seventeen years pass without justice, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she's lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened.

Shifting between the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on's classmates struck in different ways by her otherworldly beauty, Lemon ostensibly takes the shape of a crime novel. But identifying the perpetrator is not the main objective here: Kwon Yeo-sun uses this well-worn form to craft a searing, timely exploration of privilege, jealousy, trauma and how we live with the wrongs we have endured and inflicted in turn.

©2021 Kwon Yeo-Sun (P)2021 Head of Zeus

Critic reviews

"Discovering whodunnit isn't really the point here; Lemon is a subtle, often intense meditation on the after-effects of violence." (Guardian)

"Chilling, suspenseful and disconcerting." (Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face)

"Lemon is a chilling yet deeply moving story about grief, trauma, life, death and the shattered pieces left behind by those who are gone." (An Yu, author of Braised Pork)