(Perhaps it’s no mere coincidence that the number four in Korean is a homonym for “death.”)īut 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. 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. 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.
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. but even in reflection.I’m not speaking falsely. I’m an author, so this is where my own writerly fail-safes kick-in, warning of hype and hyperbole. This is a book that alters the way we remember. 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. Jamie Ford is the New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. 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. 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. 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. 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.
“I can fall asleep better if I’m next to the wall,” she says. At night, they sleep on the floor and she offers to lie next to the wall to shield him from a draft. He lives in a duty office in the building where he works, because he can't afford an apartment.
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.
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