Please Look After Mom

When their elderly mother goes missing at the train station in Seoul, her concerned family mounts an intensive effort to locate her. As they reminisce about her, they discover that many of their perceptions of her have been mistaken. The story is told from the introspective points of view of her family members. The four narrators inhabit the roles of the daughter, son, husband, and mother. They all capture the individual qualities of each character, in particular, the husband's thoughtlessness and the daughter's tempestuousness. The pacing of all the narrators is appropriately slow and thoughtful, reflecting the inner experiences of each character who is coping with Mom's disappearance. Korean writer Shin, long considered the voice of her generation, has vaulted to international renown with this novel. S.E.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

December 6, 2010
Shin's affecting English-language debut centers on the life of a hardworking, uncomplaining woman who goes missing in a bustling Seoul subway station. After Park So-nyo's disappearance, her grown children and her husband are filled with guilt and remorse at having taken So-nyo for granted and reflect, in a round-robin of narration, on her life and role in their lives. Having, through Mom's unstinting dedication, achieved professional success, her children understand for the first time the hardships she endured. Her irresponsible and harshly critical husband, meanwhile, finally acknowledges the depth of his love and the seriousness of her sacrifices for him. Narrating in her own voice late in the book, the spirit of Mom watches her family and finally voices her lifelong loneliness and depression and recalls the one secret in her life. As memories accrue, the narrative becomes increasingly poignant and psychologically revealing of all the characters, and though it does sometimes go soggy with pathos, most readers should find resonance in this family story, a runaway bestseller in Korea poised for a similar run here.