Please Look After Mom
Ratings22
Average rating4.1
If you've ever loved a parent, or another human for that matter, try to read this book without feeling an overwhelming wave of selfishness and guilt.
How well do we really know someone? How much are we supposed to really know someone? Chances are not enough and more than we allow ourselves.
Please Look After Mom is not a page-turning thriller. It is an opportunity to be honest with ourselves and our fellow humans about the levels of compassion we are comfortable with.
This is a zinger of a novel. (And why, why, why, I ask, am I reading this novel at this time? So mysterious.) No one is looking after Mom and, after a while, Mom just wanders off. Her family doesn't even realize she is missing until she has been lost for some time.
And where does she go? No one knows for sure, but her family sees her, or what they think is her, everywhere.
Told alternately from the point-of-view of the various family members, this is a powerful story. I think I would love it even if I wasn't trying harder than I've ever tried in my life to Look After Mom myself.
This book had some really touching portrayals of motherhood, but it was dragged down by how much of a trope every single character was. I liked the mom's part of the story, the husband was okay, and I think it told an important lesson, but everything was so heavy handed.
OMG it's Fifty Shades of Grey for the Korean mother set. It's a rich fantasy where a mother's disappearance sends her kids and husband into spiralling guilt over how they should have paid her more attention while she was around. No wonder it sold millions in South Korea. It feeds on the Korean mother as martyr complex while showcasing what her sacrifices wrought - a wealthy and successful first born son and a daughter who is a world renowned author. Even the daughter who has gone to raise her own kids is doing it in America.
There are so many cultural cues that, while certainly universal, resonate so clearly for a Korean son. And while I resent the clear manipulations on display here, don't think I didn't go and visit my folks immediately after reading the book. I've bumped my rating from a 3 to a 4 simply for the joy of reading my first Korean translation and recognizing so many of the Korean traditions and cues that I spent much of my formative years as a second gen trying to ignore.
This is an astounding book from a number of perspectives. It's every family's story. It was touching to read (and read) the adult children's voices, as well as their father's. It was easy to read, and yet captured visually and emotionally a family trying to make sense of what had happened to their mother.