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WINNER OF THE MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE
When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mom?
Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.
- Sales Rank: #54004 in Books
- Brand: Vintage
- Published on: 2012-04-03
- Released on: 2012-04-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .80" w x 5.10" l, .58 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 272 pages
- Vintage
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2011: There is a simple, yet remarkable, scene in Kyung-sook Shin’s novel, Please Look After Mom, where the book’s title character visits her adult son in Seoul. He lives in a duty office in the building where he works, because he can't afford an apartment. At night, they sleep on the floor and she offers to lie next to the wall to shield him from a draft. “I can fall asleep better if I’m next to the wall,” she says. And with this gesture, we catch a glimpse of the depth of love she has for her first-born and the duty-bound sacrifices she’s made on behalf her family. Please Look After Mom is the story of a mother, and her family’s search for her after she goes missing in a crowded train station, told through four richly imagined voices: her daughter’s, her oldest son’s, her husband’s, and finally her own. Each chapter adds a layer to the story’s depth and complexity, until we are left with an indelible portrait of a woman whose entire identity, despite her secret desires, is tied up in her children and the heartbreaking loss that is felt when family bonds loosen over time. Kyung-sook Shin’s elegantly spare prose is a joy to read, but it is the quiet interstitial space between her words, where our own remembrances and regrets are allowed to seep in, that convicts each one of us to our core.--Shane Hansanuwat
Guest Reviewer: Jamie Ford
Jamie Ford is the New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.
Some books change us. They change the way we look at ourselves, the way we interact with those closest to our hearts--the way we’ve loved those people, or the way we’ve missed them or honored them or taken them hopelessly for granted. This is one of those books. This is a book that alters the way we remember.
I’m an author, so this is where my own writerly fail-safes kick-in, warning of hype and hyperbole...but even in reflection...I’m not speaking falsely.
Please Look After Mom isn’t merely a story of familial loss and longing, of the many veils of shame and surrender beneath one roof. This tale is a door, and once you cross its threshold, you’ll never be able to go back to that comfortable place you came from. Your perceptions will be transformed. Permanently.
When Park So-nyo, an elderly mother from a rural town visiting her children on her birthday, vanishes over the event horizon of a crowded Seoul train station, four narratives unfold--four dimensions of loss, anger, blame, and sacrifice--four angles of persistence. (Perhaps it’s no mere coincidence that the number four in Korean is a homonym for “death.”)
But as the four pillars of one family are shaken by this mysterious disappearance, we are also enriched as we learn about the wealth of emotional currency that has been exchanged over one lifetime--tender payments, and the debts owed, from children to parent, from husband to wife, from an aged mother to...herself.
This book is four stories, four echoes, four promises, and four lamentations--that make a whole.
This is your gentle warning, dear reader.
And an invitation, to the kind of book I wish I could read again for the first time.
A Conversation with Author Kyung-Sook Shin Please Look After Mom is written in four distinct voices: a daughter, a son, a father, and finally “Mom” herself. Why did you decide to structure the novel in this way? Which voice came to you first? Human beings are multi-dimensional. But what we know about our mothers doesn’t always tell the whole story of who they are. I wanted to show a ‘Mom’ who was a complex and profound human being. As it was impossible to do this in a single person’s voice, I needed multiple narrators. In the novel, the voices of the daughter, son and father are narrated in the second person, “you” and the third person, “her”. It’s only the mother who uses the first person. I had in mind the fact that, when a woman becomes a mother, she no longer gets to speak or sometimes even think in terms of that “I”. Of the four different voices in the book, the mother’s is perhaps the most vivid and powerful. When I was writing it, it felt as though my mother’s hand had held—even gripped—my authorial hand, so that she could tell her own story. This is an extremely personal novel, and readers will undoubtedly think about their relationship with their own mothers while reading. Did you draw on your relationship with your own family while writing the book? My own family relationships do in fact make up the background, but the episodes in the novel were invented, or altered from reality. My own mother for example, thankfully, has never gone missing. But, speaking at a symbolic level, many mothers of our generation, I believe, have gone missing or remain neglected. Has your mother read this novel? If so, what did she think/say to you about it? That she was proud of me for having written it. In Please Look After Mom, you beautifully describe many elements of Korean culture—the Full Moon Harvest, the food, clothing, etc.—that most Americans may not be familiar with. Are there any traditions that you are particularly excited to share with readers here? The novel’s various aspects of Korean culture came up naturally as I was describing the everyday life of the ‘Mom’ character. The Chuseok holiday, or the Full Moon Harvest, in Korea is similar to Thanksgiving in America. On that day, family members all over the country return to their hometowns. In order to show gratitude to our ancestors, offerings are prepared from the season’s harvest. We also pay our respects at their gravesites. On a clear night, you can see the full moon on Chuseok. There’s a popular saying that translates roughly to, “May your life be as plentiful and full of joy as a Chuseok night.” It expresses the sentiment that the person’s life will be as bright as the full moon during the harvest festival. Last year, I got to spend my first American Thanksgiving in New York. I was invited to have dinner by a friend who’d been living in New York for a long time. Turkey was served, of course, and I had a wonderful time sharing the meal with my host’s family. Just as Americans celebrate the day over turkey, Koreans spend Chuseok sharing songpyeon, or half-moon shaped rice cakes, with their families. I was delighted by the similarities between the two holidays. Dining with someone, especially these days, isn’t simply a matter of sating one’s hunger—preparing a meal with someone and dining under the same roof is of course a way of connecting. You can drink tea with just anyone, but to dine with someone shows how close you are to that person. In my book, ‘Mom’ is always preparing warm meals, often to send them to family members living out in the city. I wanted food to play an important role in my book—a symbol of warmth that can’t be expressed with words. I wish I could prepare for my American readers the many Korean dishes that appear in Please Look After Mom, so that we could share them together! But, moving beyond food, Korea has a number of beautifully elegant Buddhist temples, such as Hwaeomsa, Pusoksa and Haeinsa, and seowon (a kind of Confucian academy) such as Dosanseowon and Byungsanseowon. These are sacred and quiet spaces, containing the spirit and culture of the country. You should definitely pay them a visit if you are ever in Korea. If you have an interest in music, try listening to pansori, Korean traditional music, which contains a different resonance than Western harmonics, and expresses a distinctly Korean sorrow and humor. Your novel is being published in many countries and people around the world are identifying with the characters you have depicted. What are some of the universal truths of the relationship between mothers and children that you explore in the novel? The line by Mom when she finds her mother’s soul (“Did Mom know? That I, too, needed her my entire life?”) expresses, I believe, a universal truth. When I’d written that sentence, I felt that the work was complete. We all need mothers, regardless of who we are. Even those who are currently mothers! One theme that runs throughout the novel is that of personal dreams versus sacrifice for family. Do you feel that this struggle is different for older and younger generations? There’s that old saying that God couldn’t do everything himself, so he created mothers. No matter how much society advances, there’s bound to be some gap between a woman’s desire for self-actualization and her need to give of herself for her family. Of course, the situation has improved a great deal, but the dilemma persists. It still holds that one person’s development comes from someone else’s care and sacrifice: nothing and no one can replace a mother. I think humankind has been able to sustain itself because, at its center, there’s this entity called, “Mom.” You are now an extremely well-known and widely respected author in Korea. Has this fame dramatically changed your life, and your experience of being a writer? What kind of responses did the novel receive in Korea? I published my first work of fiction in a Korean literary journal at twenty-two. From age sixteen to thirty, I was always working. I went to high school at night and worked during the day for a company that made stereo systems. When I was in college, I would tutor children, write and do research for the school newspaper, and read to those who’d suddenly gone blind. Even after my first book was published, I worked all sorts of jobs, any really, that would allow me to write: an editor at a publishing house, a writer for a classical radio station or for magazines, etc. My experience at these jobs provided vivid material for when it came time to write. But it was when I was about to turn thirty, when I published my second book, that people began to really pay attention. It was totally unexpected. The book was a collection of nine stories, and within six-months after it was published, 300,000 copies had been sold. It was the first time that a short-story collection had done so well in Korea. Everyone was surprised. For the next twenty years, my readers have stayed with me for every book I published. Thanks to their support, I have been able to live a life of great freedom, and to devote all of my time to writing. This was a dramatic shift for me. Writing and my personal life became like two sides of the same coin. Whatever I was experiencing at a personal level in Korean society, I tried novelizing to the most truthful and powerful extent possible, and my readers seemed to actively engage with my work and sympathize with it. Even today, I write a little every day without being tied down to anything else. I only feel free when I’m writing, and the best way I know how to give back for this invaluable freedom is to write in a way that engages people—and will make readers curious about what the next work will be like! Although this is your first book to be published in English, you’ve written numerous other works of fiction. When did you first begin to write and what topics were you drawn to? I’m the product of my mother’s influence. My mother would look so happy when she saw me reading a book. I started out reading to bring more happiness to my mother, who always looked so tired. Even before I was ten, it was my dream to become a writer. I began writing fiction on my own when I was in high school. Of course, it was an exercise more than anything. I wrote in any form I wanted—stories, essays, poems—pieces where often, the beginning didn’t even fit with the end. I was a young girl who’d moved to Seoul from the countryside. I lied about my age to get a job at a company. Back then, South Korea was an industrial society and not yet a democracy, and there were disputes between the workers and the company, demonstrations almost every day. Hearing cries of protest from outside, I would lay out my notebook on the conveyor belt and write. Writing was what got me through those years; five years later, I formally made my debut as a writer. I wrote, wanting to produce a work that expressed human beauty and its almost magical strength even when confronted with the most tragic situations. I wanted, too, to write about respect and compassion for life. Now that I am older I have these same hopes. But I also hope that after they read my works, readers will be seized by the longing to remember and see again someone they’d forgotten, or some aspect of life they may have overlooked. Whenever I see people drowning in suffering and sadness, I feel a strong compulsion to return to my writing. I would like for my work to in a way play a maternal role, of standing by those who feel sorrow, whether it is of social or personal origin. Tell us more about your writing habits. When and where do you like to write? I like best to write from 3 in the morning till 9 in the morning. I like the feeling of writing in darkness and working myself, little by little, towards light. One of my habits as I write is that I often wash my hands in cold water. Is there a message that you hope readers take away from Please Look After Mom? I’ll point you to the novel’s epigraph, by Franz Liszt: “Love, so long as you can love.” And I’d hope you’d remember, and realize again the plain truth that your mother was not born that way, that she too had to become a mother. Taking the time to think about your mother might also mean taking the time to think about yourself. If anyone wants to call his or her mother after reading this book, it would please me very much. Lastly, you are living here in the U.S. this year, studying at Columbia. What have you enjoyed most about living in New York? I’m very much enjoying the tremendous variety of culture New York has to offer: MoMA, The Guggenheim, The Met, The Frick, The Morgan Library, The Whitney. I’m also visiting small galleries in Chelsea. I’ve been going to the opera, theater, musicals, the ballet and the cinema. I’m also trying all sorts of cuisines. Restaurants from all of the world seem to be gathered in New York. The beauty, spectacle and drama that echoes at the Metropolitan Opera, especially, is something you can’t get in Korea, so I have acquired season tickets. But, “culture” is everywhere here; the streets of Manhattan themselves feel like theater. When I’m strolling around, I always have the pleasure of finding something new that I didn’t notice the day before. From Booklist
This novel from widely acclaimed Korean author Shin focuses on motherhood and family guilt. Park So-nyo, mother of four now-adult children, has gone missing in a Seoul train station on the way to visit them. The novel is told in four parts, from the perspectives of, first, her daughter, and then, her firstborn son, her husband, and finally, So-nyo herself. Composed almost entirely in second-person narration, the writing is sharp, biting, and intensely moving. So-nyo’s children continually battle with their own guilt for not taking better care of her while reminiscing about the times when they were young, growing up in incredible poverty in the countryside. The children come to terms with their mother’s absence in their own ways, and their father repents for a lifetime of neglect. When So-nyo’s voice enters the narrative, the portrait of a troubled but loving family is complete. Secrets are revealed, and the heart of a mother is beautifully exposed. This Korean million-plus-copy best-seller is an impressive exploration of family love, poverty, and triumphing over hardship. --Julie Hunt
Review
“A suspenseful, haunting, achingly lovely novel about the hidden lives, wishes, struggles and dreams of those we think we know best.” —Seattle Times
“A moving portrayal of the surprising nature, sudden sacrifices, and secret reveries of motherhood.” —Elle
“Intimate and hauntingly spare. . . . A raw tribute to the mysteries of motherhood.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Lovely. . . . Please Look After Mom, especially its magical, transcendent ending, lifts the spirit as only the best writing can do.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Shin renders a tender and beautiful portrait of South Korea, but the novel recognizes a familial dilemma experienced throughout the world.” –Ms. Magazine blog
“The most moving and accomplished, and often startling, novel in translation I’ve read in many seasons. . . . Every sentence is saturated in detail. . . . It tells an almost unbearably affecting story of remorse and belated wisdom that reminds us how globalism—at the human level—can tear souls apart and leave them uncertain of where to turn.” —Pico Iyer, Wall Street Journal
“The novel perfectly combines universal themes of love and loss, family dynamics, gender equality, tradition, and charity with the rich Korean culture and values which make Please Look After Mom a great literary masterpiece.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“An authentic, moving story that brings to vivid life the deep family connections that lie at the core of Korean culture. But it also speaks beautifully to an urgent issue of our time: migration, and how the movement of people from small towns and villages to big cities can cause heartbreak and even tragedy. This is a tapestry of family life that will be read all over the world. I loved this book.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
“Haunting. . . . The novel’s language—so formal in its simplicity—bestows a grace and solemnity on childhood scenes that might otherwise be overwrought. . . . Throughout the novel, the rhythms of agrarian life and labor that Shin deftly conveys have a subtle, cumulative power.” —Boston Sunday Globe
“An affecting account of a slow-burn family break-up. . . . Well-controlled and emotionally taut. . . . What distinguishes this novel is the way it questions whether our pasts, either public or private, are really available for us to recollect and treasure anyway.” —The Financial Times
“A captivating story, written with an understanding of the shortcomings of traditional ways of modern life. It is nostalgic but unsentimental, brutally well observed and, in this flawlessly smooth translation by Chi-Young Kim, it offers a sobering account of a vanished past. . . . We must hope there will be more translations to follow.” —Times Literary Supplement (London)
“A poignant story of a family told in four voices. . . . Shin’s storytelling and her gift for detail make Please Look After Mom a book worth reading.” —Post and Courier
“Shin perceptively explores the greatest mystery—not Mom’s disappearance, but who Mom really was. Every mom, that is.” –Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Here is a wonderful, original new voice, by turns plangent and piquant. Please Look After Mom takes us on a dual journey, to the unfamiliar corners of a foreign culture and into the shadowy recesses of the heart. In spare, exquisite prose, Kyung-sook Shin penetrates the very essence of what it means to be a family, and a human being.” —Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of March
“Shin is a scribe with a slow and steady pulse; this is writing that allows you to meander with your own thoughts (and reflect on your own mother, perhaps), while still following the physical and mental travels of her characters. . . . Plain and softy insistent eloquence.” —Hyphen Magazine
“Intriguing. . . . It is easy to see the source of this global popularity, for not only is Shin’s absorbing novel written with considerable grace and suspense, but she also has managed to tap into a universality: the inequitable relationship between a mother and her children.” —Bookpage
“An arresting account of the misunderstandings that can cloud the beauty of the affection and memories that bind two very different generations. . . . A touching story that effectively weaves the rural, ages-old lifestyle of a mother into the modern urban lives of her children.” —Newark Star-Ledger
“Here is a deeply felt journey into a culture foreign to many—yet with a theme that is universal in its appeal. A terrific novel that stayed with me long after I’d finished its final, haunting pages. This is a real discovery.” —Abraham Verghese, bestselling author of Cutting for Stone
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Being a Mom is a gift from heaven! Excellent read!
By Sabbeth43
Having read several Asian memoirs, it was a bit like serendipity to come across this gem of a book. Though it's written as fiction, the prize-winning author recounts stories that reflect the true nature of Korean society, their culture and traditions and, most importantly, their familial relationships. I read this story during Mother's Day weekend and was so inspired to be reminded of the many sacrifices a good mother must make. It was a refreshing read in today's world where American women need so much pampering and "down" time and "me" time and "spa" time and "gym" time. American mothers also do too much fretting about trivia such as what kind of car seat they should buy or what's the latest colors to use in the nursery and trying to decide whether to spend that extra money for organic foods. How about worrying about having any more rice in the pot to feed your starving children?
The "Mom" in the story is a woman who humbles herself before God and accepts her plight in life with a simple smile and a willingness to share His love with every soul she meets, especially those less fortunate. She will bear all pain in order to serve her family and others with a heap of kindness and charity. What a better world it would be if more of us had her generous spirit!
What I found surprising in this tale was the fictional account of the husband's awakening of his transgressions against his saintly wife. It has been a problem for women over many centuries in Asian countries that women are not honored as equals. I would make this book mandatory reading for every young man! No woman should ever have to walk behind her man!
The different narrations provided a more rounded and richer portrait of "Mom" and its wonderful creative style gave more drama when "Mom" herself ultimately tells her side of the story. So often her thoughts mirrored my own and brought me to tears. I too can say my children have brought me immeasurable joy and all the days I spent with them are beautiful memories. I thank God I never had to work and could nurture my children and always be there for them.
The ending will delight you, wash over you and leave you in awe of the precious gift of motherhood. A must read for all those mothers who have made and continue to make sacrifices for their beloved children.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
This book actually changed my life.
By Julia Perrodin
When I finished this book I could scarcely breathe. I have read thousands of good books, but every now and then you run across that rarity that changes your life. There are those rare gems that change the way you look at people. Those books give you some sort of insight to something or give you empathy for a group of people thought you had never considered before. I have always been close to my mother; my entire family has always been close knit. However, this book has changed my relationship with my mother for the better forever. There is a passage that I'd like to share near the beginning of the book that I think embodies the spirit of the story. "You don't understand why it took you so long to realize something so obvious. To you, mom was always mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been 3 or 12 or 20 years old. Mom was mom. She was born as mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn't dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you."
Yes this book did forever change the way I see my mother, and I will do my best never to take her for granted again. Only the very best writing can change people's lives like that.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A unique telling of family, personal choices and culture
By Ellis Taoky
the Author has crafted an interesting and unique approach to telling a story of a Korean Family that educates the reader in Korean culture and conflicts endemic with contrasts in generational lifestyle values. The author presents the reader with individual family member's memories of thier life as it was influenced by thier "mom" as she sought to retain the cultural values of a different time in history as compared to the values and needs of a younger generation having to live and work in a more modern world. The approach is unique in that the reader is given the story line by each individual from that person's perspective from beginning to end at one time in a sense of four tales of a family's existance. While the writing is based on Korean Culture and Society one is drawn to the many parallels of personal experiences that parallel that of the Korean conditions. In this respect "Please Look After Mom" is a universal story repeated in many cultures in one form or another.
Kyung-Sook Shin adds an interesting twist as she presents Mom's rememberances that will challenge the reader!
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