![]() ![]() Primarily composed of four sections narrated by Park, her eldest son, her husband, and one of their two daughters, the book-Shin’s first to be translated into English-is a moving portrayal of the surprising nature, sudden sacrifices, and secret reveries of motherhood. ![]() A best-seller in her native South Korea, Shin’s Please Look After Mom tells the story of Park So-nyo, a devoted, do-all wife and mother who mysteriously goes missing. The universal resonance of family life lifts a novel rooted in the experience of Korean modernity to international success. A raw tribute to the mysteries of motherhood. And yet this book isn’t as interested in emotional manipulation as it is in the invisible chasms that open up between people who know one another best. Chi-hon’s voice is the novel’s most distinct, but Father’s is the most devastating. Shin’s prose, intimate, and hauntingly spare, powerfully conveys grief’s bewildering immediacy. Questions punctuate narrative and lead to a cascade of revelations, discoveries that come gradually. Only after her children grow up and leave their home in does Mom’s strength and purposefulness begin to flag. The family is poor, but she sees to it that her children’s bellies are filled. runs their rural home ‘like a factory,’ sews and knits and tills the fields. It is told from the perspectives of four members of family from their memories emerges a portrait of a heroically industrious woman. Shin’s novel, her first to be translated into English, embraces multiplicity. ![]()
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