Lemon: Kwon Yeo-sun

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Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors. She knows that she should be thinking about leaving, but who will help the people of her beloved country if she doesn't? With her heart so conflicted, her mind has conjured a vision to spur her to action. His name is Khawf, and he haunts her nights with hallucinations of everything she has lost. But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, when she crosses paths with Kenan, the boy she was supposed to meet on that fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all. Charming, beguiling, and unique. At the heart of this 'mystery' is a poetic meditation on grief, guilt, and the meaning of life. In the end, Lemon, like a great painting, makes you see the world differently Alongside, we follow Mrs Pankhurst’s story and the suffragette movement which resorted to violent protest and means to put forth the claim for votes for women; they too faced derision, cruelty, like force feeding when they went on hunger strike in prison or even violence/assault during protests. Mrs Pankhurst’s own interest in fashion and shopping was passed on to her fellow campaigners who were encouraged to look their best, and it was sometimes ladies who were members of both movements who achieved some success in preventing them from wearing feathered hats.

Read the first chapter of Kwon Yeo-Sun’s slim novel Lemon and you could easily mistake it for a thriller. The book, translated from Korean by Janet Hong, has all the elements of the genre: protagonists haunted by an unsolved murder, a cop more interested in making an arrest than finding the killer, a dead girl whose beauty has turned her into something approaching myth. But this is a murder mystery less interested in victim and killer than in the motivations of those consuming their story—those who create meaning where, most likely, none exists. That consumption is its own violence. So what happened? Why am I not head over heels for this story? The writing was quite good, the descriptions were also nicely done. There is nothing glaringly obvious throughout the entire length. I have admit I came to this book with low expectations. The story of an Englishman’s escape into rural Spain seemed to promise only the same endlessly repeated tropes: the hapless foreigner making their way in a strange land, the contrast of dreary modern life with the pure traditions of the unlettered, the isolation of cities compared with the communality of the country—you’ve heard it all before. This book covers some fascinating areas: the early conservation of birds and the foundation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the women’s suffrage movement, the deplorable conditions of the working class in the Victorian & Edwardian eras and also attitudes towards, and economic significance of, women’s fashion. With all these areas to combine the task is ambitious but the author has presented an engrossing piece of social history in a highly readable text. It's a sly, subtle piece of literary crime, carefully playing on its shifting perspectives to unsettling effect. An intriguing readSeventeen 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. A deftly written exploration of life and death, grief, revenge, and acceptance of the unknown, all cloaked in an engaging murder mystery." - Ms. Magazine, Most Anticipated Reads But I was pleasantly surprised by the book; indeed, by the end I was thoroughly charmed. Stewart does not idealize the inhabitants Andalucia; for him, they are individuals, not bearers of ancient tradition. He enjoys farming and herding, but he knows it can be rough, tedious, and thankless work. Certainly he plays the role of the inept foreigner—this is inevitable if you’re moving someplace new—but he does not dwell on this overmuch. For somebody who began writing fairly late in life, he is a tasteful and skillful author. He is capable of rich prose, he has a good ear for dialogue, and best of all he does not stretch any subject beyond interest.

The book is actually only half about Etta Lemon, a woman who felt passionately that feathers/whole birds shouldn't be used to decorate hats and who was central to the founding of the RSPB. She took on the trend for 'murderous millinery' and made it her life's work - and good on her! A high School Beauty, Kim Hae, is found dead….sitting in a passenger seat of Shin Jeongjun’s car….. Maybe I should have known. After all, the title says "an optimist in Andalucia." That optimism definitely permeated the book. The problem was it wasn't just over Stewart. You could feel it over every moment and every character. It watered it down and even though he was writing about an area of the world near and dear to my heart, I found myself just not caring.

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Emmeline Pankhurst’s nemesis and the namesake of this book is the conservative, anti-Suffrage advocate Etta Lemon - a tireless and fervent campaigner for the protection of birds. Her crusade lasted for her entire life, beginning as part of the Society for the a protection of Birds (SPB). While Etta did not falter in her aim she did not physically suffer for her cause in the way the Pankhurst women did, via imprisonment and hunger strikes, through to forced feeding which impacted upon their health. Etta seems to be sustained through evangelical zeal and righteousness both in her life and throughout the lifelong fight on behalf of her beautiful birds. Shifting between the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on's classmates, 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.