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Please Look After Mother (2008)

by Kyung-sook Shin(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0297860739 (ISBN13: 9780297860730)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

George Weidenfeld & Nicholson

review 1: This was one of those book club selections that I probably wouldn't have picked up on my own, but it certainly inspired plenty of discussion! Most of the discussion focused on the character of Mom, a Korean woman who sacrifices so much for her family that she seems to have no identity apart from them. And when she disappears from a train station one day, her children and her husband begin an emotional guilt trip as her absence makes them see how much they took her for granted and how little they knew about who she really was. But between the lines, we see that Mom wasn't completely innocent in the family dynamic. Mom played favorites, treating her oldest son as the saving prince of a poor family with a frequently absent (and cheating) father. (Throughout the book, this son... more, Hyong-chol, is the one who is named most often. Other characters are usually referred to by relationship--your sister, his brother--or strangely, through the second-person narrative of You.) The other children often appear to be afterthoughts. At least one son is never even named in the story! Mom wants her oldest daughter to get the education she never had and pursue a career, rather than settle for the type of life she had as a wife and mother. But when the daughter goes out on her own and becomes a successful novelist, Mom criticizes her for not staying closer to home, and not paying enough attention to family and traditions. Mom had a wandering husband, but we are led to believe that she may have also been wandering, keeping many things about her life a secret from the rest. While the family feels horrible about Mom's disappearance, as time passes, it seems as if they might be better off without the constant guilt-trip that Mom laid on them. In our society, this describes many dysfunctional families. But this story takes place in modern-day South Korea, which led to a discussion about whether or not what we might see as "dysfunction" is a cultural norm elsewhere.Let's hope not. As far as I'm concerned, not matter what the setting, this is just another dysfunctional family story. And in the end, I didn't feel very sympathetic to any single character.
review 2: كانت جميلة بطريقة الطرح المحبوكة بطريقة الخطابو كأن القارئ هو كل شخصية في القصةجمال الطريقة ناسب القضية والمضمون ، وجمالية الكتاب بأنه كان يتكلم عن قضية مهمةجميع الأمثلة والاحداث كانت واقعية نراها و نسمع عنها كثيراو على اختلاف درجات التفاوت نجد منها اسقاطات على انفسنا.رواية تجعلك تتساءل كثيرا و تتأمل حال تقصيرك أكثرلربما لو لم تكن ضمن اختيارات نادي القراءة لما اقتنيتها لكنها كانت صدفة جميلة بأبعادها كلما تأملتها أكثر less

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