Please Look After Mom
SynopsisPlot
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?
Story
About this book
Kyung-Sook Shin's novel opens with a disappearance. Sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo becomes separated from her husband in the crowds of a Seoul subway station, and her family cannot find her. What begins as a frantic search quickly turns inward, as each member of the family starts to confront how little attention they paid to the woman at its center. The story is set against the contrasts of modern South Korea, where rural life and the pressures of a fast-growing capital city pull families in different directions.
The novel is structured around multiple viewpoints. So-nyo's adult children and her husband each narrate sections, and through their recollections a fuller picture of her life takes shape. Long-held secrets surface, and private regrets accumulate. The family discovers that So-nyo carried burdens they never asked about and made sacrifices they barely noticed. Each perspective reveals a different gap between what the family assumed and what was actually true.
Originally published in Korean in 2008, the book was translated into English by Chi-Young Kim. It received the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011, making Kyung-Sook Shin the first woman to win that award.
