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... In Sanghui’s first chapter, four years after Hae-on’s murder, she recalls the agitation of the days following the discovery of Hae-on’s body. Her fellow students obsessed over the case, using class hours to plot out timelines and argue over the facts of the police report (what exactly does “cranial injury” mean?) while their teachers were either unable or unmoved to divert their attention. As the investigation peters out, Sanghui describes a collective guilt spreading throughout the class. Over what? Their inability to solve the murder, their enjoyment in their attempts? The fact of their existence, their ability to move on? Likely all of it: 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. something that’s learned as they grow up? It can be both? It can be caused by a combination of factors?”

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. Sadly and ironically, the patriarchy conspired to eject Etta Lemon from both her position and the annals of the RSPB until Tessa Boase revealed her full story here. We even discover many other women’s views about ‘Murderous Millinery’ and the Suffrage movement. For instance, Virginia Woolfe both RSPB supporter and Suffragist, refused to wear feathers but baulked at blaming women for the fashion trend when she vehemently exclaimed: ‘the birds are killed by men, starved by men, and tortured by men - not vicariously, but with their own hands.’ 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. After a full minute, I decided to wait. I waited to see what happens after Ana arrived. Maybe she would be a mitigatjng force. She was. I waited to see when the previous farmer finished teaching Chris the Andalucia farming practices and introducing him to other Spanish farmers. I am glad I waited. Also other English transplants showed up in the narrative. And other European/outsiders also showed up, all teaching and learning together.

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The Realtor takes him around to look at the various farms, driving down a road next to a lemon orchard where he had to drive over the lemons that had been blown onto the road, so the title of this book. Once at the entrance to the farm, he learns that he had to walk an hour to get to it. Then, when he describes the farm, I think, the title of this book should have been, Buying a Lemon, because, first, there is no road access, and then he learns that there is no water or electricity, but there are scorpions. Sold! 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. The December book for one of my online book clubs is "Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds" by Tessa Boase. Almost 20 years after the brutal murder of her then 19-year old sister, Da-on is still living with the consequences. Kwon Yeo-Sun's Lemon explores the long-term effect of this trauma. With no one ever arrested for the crime, Da-on continues to look for suspects and answers. In the meantime, she changes in fundamental ways. Not only does she gain weight, but she wears clothes that make her look inconspicuous, has mental health problems and becomes devoutly religious.

The book’s initial focus is upon a singular woman, Alice Battershall - an exploited slum worker engaged in the preparation of feathers for the ‘Murderous Millinery’ trade- whose occupation provided fashionable headwear for the upper classes. Then Emmeline Pankhurst steps up to demand rights and the vote for women, including those like Alice. These suffragettes (unlike the earlier, peace abiding suffragists) were militant but glamorous feminists, who wore the plumage of the ostrich, osprey and various other species that were hunted to the brink of extinction. Such women used their feminine appearance to strengthen their fight by showing that they hailed from the upper echelons of society but also as a surprise tactic. Who expected a ‘lady’ to wreak havoc and break shop windows, even of those milliners who provided their hats! 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. This one crept up on me: it's not unusual to find books which hang a story on the bones of crime fiction, almost always choosing the violent killing of a woman so that it's written, literally, 'over her dead body'- but this develops in more complex directions and gains meaning as it probes larger questions of life and death. From these and Boase’s writing, we get a good sense of out two heroines, Etta Lemon and Emmeline Pankhurst—where they came from, what drove them, and their lives, thoughts and ideas which moved in very different directions to each other. At the heart of the story are two adversaries, arraigned principally not against each other, but for the causes they champion: Etta Lemon for the preservation of birds, murdered by the million to keep every society hat feathered to its fullest glory; and Emmeline Pankhurst, feisty wearer of the hats Lemon abhorred, and suffrage champion who, along with so many others, tore up the rulebook and went to prison in the fight for women’s votes.

Lemon

Hace tiempo que no ME COMÍA un libro. Lo empecé en un finde relajado y de repente... se acabó el finde. Es una gozada de principio a fin, exceptuando quizá las partes donde se faenan a los animales, aunque al menos están en el campo y literalmente se los comen y viven de ello. Jolts with its brilliance and tartness. It's simply electric' Kyung-sook Shin, author of Please Look After Mother Burning with the fires of hope and possibility, As Long as the Lemon Trees Growwill sweep you up and never let you go. Lemon” [a Korean translated psychological literary crime thriller] is the strangest-odd-intriguing….slowly affecting book …