Name: Please Look After Mom
Rating: 3.835294117647059 (85 reviews)
ISBN: 9780307739513

Kyung-Sook Shin

Chi-Young Kim

An American release of an award-winning South Korean best-seller follows the efforts of a family to find the mother who went missing from Seoul Station and their sobering realizations when they recall memories that suggest she may not have been happy. Reprint.

A Novel

Please Look After Mom

엄마를 부탁해

Jill

Who would’ve thought that I’ll be giving this a five star rating? Not my overly critical, bitter and very hard to please self, that’s for sure. Let me just start by saying that this book was a rollercoaster of emotions. I mean, I knew the moment I picked it up that it was going to be heavy but I never thought that I would shed tears (yes, I did and yes, I know can be such a big baby). It’s true that you will never see your mother the same way again after reading this. There are a couple of things that I’d like to point out though, despite my glowing and rather uncustomary rating: The pacing was slow. Despite being a short read, it took its time. It didn’t get better. Another is that the shifting of POVs was hard to follow. I, particularly, am not a fan of this but I guess in this case, it was kind of helpful to have different narrators in order to really get to know the main character. Still, it could’ve been done better. All in all, it was a good and heartwarming read to wrap up 2018.

Follows the efforts of a family to find the mother who went missing from Seoul Station and their sobering realizations when they recall memories that suggest she may not have been happy.

Please Look After Mother

I can feel the emotions of the characters although it can get confusing at times. Overall an okay book with a pretty touching ending.

Natasha Mok

zainab

absolutely incredible piece of literature. genuinely an important read

milly

4.5**

Literally after 5 mins of logging this I burst into tears…i think it hit me all at once. Honestly i loved this might change the rating once i sit with it a little longer.

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 Mother? Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love. 'Kyung-Sook Shin's tale... has hit a nerve' Guardian 'A raw tribute to the mysteries of motherhood' New York Times Book Review 'The most moving and accomplished, and often startling, novel' Wall Street Journal

Honestly heartbreaking. I have never ever been so glad of always being nice to my mom and thinking of her as her own person. We, as a society, have to acknowledge women as having a role aside from motherhood, and actually getting to know the mothers around us. Truly broke my heart. 

But the writing was very easy to read, but also very easy to drop. Didn´t find the different narrator voices confusing, and they were nicely tied together. It was nice to start the chapters not knowing who was talking, but figuring it out soon after. 

Denisse Garcia Ramírez 

Honestly heartbreaking. I have never ever been so glad of always being nice to my mom and thinking of her as her own person. We, as a society, have to acknowledge women as having a role aside from motherhood, and actually getting to know the mothers around us. Truly broke my heart. 

But the writing was very easy to read, but also very easy to drop. Didn´t find the different narrator voices confusing, and they were nicely tied together. It was nice to start the chapters not knowing who was talking, but figuring it out soon after. 

Anyaconda

A very depressing book with a huge impact. I can't say I enjoyed reading it, but the topics discussed are really important. I'll give this 4 stars, but will probably never re-read it. 
I'm excited though for the second book, which I got an eARC for.

kim♡

** spoiler alert **
           torn between giving this a three-star or a four-star but i'll go with the latter. mom's connection (secret relationship) with eungyu broke my heart. how a stranger can offer her more comfort than her husband.

Trish

❝ His heart brims with the desire to do nothing but look after Mom when she’s found. 

But he has already lost that chance. ❞

——

Please Look After Mom is a story, at its core, about regret. A mother, a wife, has gone missing, and the family who is frantically looking for her are plagued by the unbearable feeling that they spent the majority of their lives taking her presence for granted. 

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and this novel is the exploration of that well known idiom. 

How does that happen? How does life get so hectic that we lose focus of what is most important? How do we forget to pay attention to the person who gave us life? There was a time for each of us when Mom was the center of the universe. At some indistinct point, as we take in more of the world, that focus shifts and we have friends, colleagues, significant others, children, all who take up and demand the energy and devotion that once, at the beginning of time, belonged undivided to our mothers. 

——

❝ Last New Year’s Eve, I wrote down what I wanted to do with my life, other than writing. Just for fun. The things I wanted to do in the next ten years. But I didn’t plan on doing anything with Mom. I didn’t realize that while I was writing it. But now, when I look at it after Mom’s gone missing… ❞

——

Is it an unfair law of nature that children forever remain the center of their Mom’s world? That Mom never stops longing and wishing for her kids’ happiness? That she measures her life’s success by the talents, virtues and accomplishments of her children and not her own? 

——

Thought-provoking, utterly heartbreaking and unbearably haunting, this novel puts a mirror in front of every reader and says: How well do you know your Mom? What do you do to show her you care about her? When was the last time you said you love her? Was it today? If not, why not? 

What if she’s gone tomorrow? Disappears, like thin air?

Do you know enough about her daily routine, the people she meets, the places she goes, her innermost desires and dreams? 

Could you find her?

Gulshan Hasanzada

Anaya həsr olunmuş kədərli simfoniya

İlk öncə onu deyim ki, nəql etmə üslubuna heyran qaldım, hər fəsildə oxucuya, obrazlardan birinin yerinə qoyulurmuş kimi sən deyə müraciət olunur və hadisələri sanki yaşamışsan kimi bir tbt oxuyursan, bax bu stil möhtəşəmdir, müəllifin başqa kitablarını da dəyərləndirəcəm bunun üçün. 

Ana hekayəsi - ailə hekayəsi - ən böyük sevgi hekayəsidir. Qəlbimizdə yatan ən dərin hisslərə və dəyərlərə toxunan bir romandır. Nə deyim? Məndən sonra oxumaq qərarına gəlsəniz, çox təşəkkür edəcəksiniz, üzümə deməsəniz də)

daisy

the perfect book to end this year for me, after reading this i finally realized how big the sacrifice some mothers made for their children (ps. i cried a lot while reading this, especially in the 'i'm home' chapter)

You will never think of your mother the same way after you read this book. Already an international sensation and a bestseller that has sold over 1.5 million copies in the author's native Korea, Please Look After Mom is a stunning, deeply moving story of a family's search for their missing mother — and their discovery of the desires, heartaches and secrets they never realized she harbored within. When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, and vanishes, their children are consumed with loud recriminations, and are awash in sorrow and guilt. As they argue over the "Missing" flyers they are posting throughout the city — how large of a reward to offer, the best way to phrase the text — they realize that none of them have a recent photograph of Mom. Soon a larger question emerges: do they really know the woman they called Mom? Told by the alternating voices of Mom's daughter, son, her husband and, in the shattering conclusion, by Mom herself, the novel pieces together, Rashomon-style, a life that appears ordinary but is anything but. This is a mystery of one mother that reveals itself to be the mystery of all our mothers: about her triumphs and disappointments and about who she is on her own terms, separate from who she is to her family. If you have ever been a daughter, a son, a husband or a mother, Please Look After Mom is a revelation — one that will bring tears to your eyes.

Jenna Kathleen

I'm having a hard time deciding if I actually liked this book or not. It's not the type of book I'd typically pick up, but I'm trying to make a point of reading more Korean authors (even if I'm just reading the English version for now) since I moved here.

The story is told from four different perspectives, three of which are told in the second person. Anyone who knows what I like to read knows I have a lot of issues with second person narratives. I find them distracting and difficult to read. I feel as if I am pressured from the very beginning to jump into the shoes of a character rather than to slowly ease into them as I get to know them. Having three different perspectives in the second person, even though they are clearly divided, made it difficult to focus on the story and I was too busy trying to understand another character.

What I did love about this book were the themes and messages. It really is a contemplation of how you think about your parents and elders in your life, especially your mom. It doesn't just tell the story of the mom, but of how her kids come to look at their mom as a regular person rather than their caregiver. While this story is a very extreme example of how we sometimes don't notice when our mothers make sacrifices for us, it does beg you to evaluate your own relationship with your mother and notice her as her own self.

Kath Lau

MY review here http://frothmagazine.com/book-review-...

Please Look After Mom A Novel

Reviews

Highlights