Please Look After Mom
Dear friends,
It’s been a while, we are already half way January and i’m still trying to process the last few months of 2023. I haven’t been doing well mentally and with that my appetite for reading took a hit. I’m currently slugging through Rosemary’s Baby, but that’s not what i’m here to talk about. Today i want to talk about "Please Look After Mom" by Kyung-sook Shin, which i had finished in early December last year but was too busy (and lazy) to write a review.
Please Look After Mom (2008) by Kyung-sook Shin.
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Contemporary, Literary Fiction.
Released in 2008, it is one of the most internationally widely-read Korean Literature in translation. Written by Kyung-sook Shin, the novel explores the themes of family, identity, and the complexities of family relationships.
Please look after mom tells the story of a family in search for their mother who goes missing at a crowded Seoul train station. As they search for their mother, they discover hidden aspects of her life, and wonder if they took her for granted while they had her.
The narrative of the story unfolds from four different perspectives: Chi-hon, the eldest daughter (the middle child) who's a successful novelist, Hyong-chol, the oldest son who's wrecked with guilt for not living up to his potential, the ungrateful cheating father, and finally from the perspective of mom. While this multiple perspectives narration style offers the reader a nuanced understanding of the family relationship, it increasingly strays from the present and centers heavily on flashbacks to life with mom.
While this novel is not plot-driven, one of its strengths lies in its ability to peel back the layers of each character, revealing vulnerabilities, regrets, and the often unspoken emotions that shape family dynamics.
“Either a mother and daughter know each other very well, or they are strangers.”
Throughout the course of the novel, we as the readers, are asked how well do we know our mothers? From the very first chapter, we reflect on who’s mom outside of the roles attached to her. Does her self cease to exist beside those roles?
As the children navigate their grief in the novel, the slowly realize that mom same as them, was a daughter, a sister, a person with a whole other narrative outside of her role as a mother.
“...I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven’t forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn’t have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn’t do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom’s dreams?”
My complaint with this book is that Shin follows an unconventional narrative style, she tells the story through second person voice "You all blamed each other for Mom’s going missing, and you all felt wounded". That was a risky move, because at times it was hard for me to stay engaged with that style while trying to adjust to different narrator at the same time.
My other complaint is that the family structure doesn't hold together. We are told that there are four (five?) children, yet when the oldest three move to Seoul, the mother is described as having nothing back home to live for, then what about the rest of the kids? There was also minimal if not none at all childhood interaction scenes between the sisters beside the oldest two children interaction.
In conclusion, Please Look After Mom is a novel that's unmistakably Korean; ancestral-rite tables, the full moon harvest, and it is also very universal offering a universal exploration of family and the intricate tapestry that binds us together. This novel urges us to cherish and understand the individuals who play pivotal roles in our lives, especially those who often remain silent —the mothers.
So, please look after Mom.
Thank you for reading today’s review. If you enjoyed it please consider buying me coffee to support my work. Likes and comments are also a big help.
