Lemon: Kwon Yeo-sun

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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. I imagine what happened inside one police interrogation room so many years ago. By imagine, I don’t mean invent. But it’s not like I was actually there, so I don’t know what else to call it. I picture the scene from that day, based on what he told me and some other clues, my own experience and conclusions. It’s not just this scene I imagine. For over sixteen years, I’ve pondered, prodded, and worked every detail embroiled in the case known as “The High School Beauty Murder”—to the point I often fool myself into thinking I’d personally witnessed the circumstances now stamped on my mind’s eye. The imagination is just as painful as reality. No, it’s more painful. After all, what you imagine has no limit or end. What was really interesting was the idea of women's legacies - the Pankhurst name has become legendary, while Etta Lemon is pretty much forgotten. I liked that this book shed some light on some powerful women of the past (as both the RSPB and suffragette contingents were mainly female). Even if they often totally disagreed... Lo mejor del libro es la naturalidad. Este extranjero viene y no idealiza al mundo rural, tampoco se idealiza a sí mismo. Tiene sentido del humor y se nota que ama el lugar en donde está. Eso hace que a una casi le den ganas de tomar sus pilchas y buscar su propio paraíso-no paraíso agreste.

Strangely absorbing... Where Lemon really shines is in its portrayal of grief and guilt, which feels so raw and complicated – as it is in real life. It doesn't offer up any real closure or resolution either, but perhaps that's just like life too' How many lives do we touch? What impact do we have on others, and what do we leave behind? Set in the aftermath of the murder of the most beautiful girl in school, Lemon, written by Yeo-sun Kwon and translated by Janet Hong, seeks to explore the terrain of the emptiness of death’s eventuality. While an unsolved murder lies at the novel’s heart, the book is more wake than crime caper. It’s a slow burn through the characters most impacted by the killing, tracing their various trajectories in the years that follow. A lot is touched on here, from class politics to the criminal justice system, but it’s the feminist lens with which Kwon regards the tragedy, and the sensitivity and subtlety she brings to her characters that propels the novel. Discovering whodunnit isn't really the point here; Lemon is a subtle, often intense meditation on the after-effects of violence' Guardian The chapters float in spare streams of consciousness. Details are minimal, lending the few remembered scenes the fuzziness of a dream. (In a conversation between Da-on and Sanghui about their shared writing class, they reminisce about reading Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; it’s easy to see the reference as a nod to Kwon’s own influences.) The narrators speak from the future, but it’s not clear where they’ve arrived. This question is amplified in Taerim’s chapters, which read as a kind of ouroboric monologue. Theoretically she’s looking for help, but she can’t stop interrupting herself long enough to ask for it. Kwon is masterful at maintaining a low level of doubt, never delivering a straightforward narrative but never straying so far from it that the work falls into incoherence. Hong’s translation is spare, lyrical. There’s a sense of writing around intentional gaps. What aren’t they telling us? I'll admit that I came to this book for perhaps strange reasons - I'd heard that it was originally published as 'Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism' and that sounded right up my street. I didn't know who Etta Lemon was, but I settled in for a good read about suffragettes and their fancy outfits.In some editions/markets, the book has a different title: "Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather: A Scandalous History of Birds, Hats and Votes." The edition I was able to get for my Kobo e-reader, however, was "Etta Lemon," so that's how I'll refer to it here. Gradually, we managed to return to our rightful place, our emotions numbed by the strain and struggle of our looming college entrance exam. We told ourselves: Some of us had to go, that’s all. One had an accident, one went abroad, one transferred schools, one dropped out, but we’re still here, aren’t we? Ah, this is killing us. Nothing’s changed. What kind of life is this? Is this living?

Some of the suffragettes were also against this 'murderous millinery', but many felt that they had to use fashion, including feathers, to enhance their power. Tessa Boase compares Etta with Emmeline Pankhurst in an interesting way. Emmeline Pankhurst, her daughters (Christabel and Sylvia), and the suffragette movement they led (under the banner of the Women's Social and Political Union, or WSPU) are very well known. But the childless Etta Lemon and her crusade to save the birds has been mostly forgotten by history -- until now, thanks to Tessa Boase and this book.A sharp, explosive novel that challenges the reader to consider the impact of beauty standards in our culture on young people, and compels us to examine our notion of what justice can be when we are faced with the unthinkable. Highly recommended' Han Clark, Lunate.co.uk The dialogue in the first chapter, “Shorts”, is continuously twisted. Kwon Yeo-sun brilliantly knows how to spin-a-yard. The other half of the story follows the suffrage movement, especially Mrs Pankhurst's militant suffragettes who used fashion to further their cause - whether through their symbolic colour code, their expensive dresses used to denote respectability, or their penchant for a nice feathered hat... I read this book to satisfy a biography and Earth day/month challenge. I became interested in this book because my pre-Modern Iberian ancestors very probably came from this area. And they were likely to have been farmers and farm workers.