-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Novel
by Kyung-sook Shin
Book Reviewed by: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.
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.
While the book's themes are universal, its details are specific to rural Asia. The book is filled with descriptions of the everyday lives of Korean farmers as the characters take turns recalling the sacrifices of their mother. The reader learns about farming and cooking, childbirth, the holding of ancestral rights, and dealing with the poverty that often accompanies an agrarian lifestyle. It's a fascinating glimpse of a lifestyle unfamiliar to many who are products of Western culture...continued
Full Review
(475 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
International bestselling author Kyung-sook Shin has garnered unprecedented levels of success for her novel, Please Look After Mom. Originally published in South Korea in 2008 and having sold over a million and a half copies, it is the first of her books to be translated into English and has been published in nineteen countries worldwide.
Born in 1963 in Jeolla Province in South Korea to a large family, Shin left home at age 16 to pursue an education in Seoul, as her parents were subsistence farmers and did not have the financial means to send her to high school. She attended the Seoul Institute of the Arts as a creative writing major, taking classes at night and working during the day, and in 1985 she published her first novella ...
If you liked Please Look After Mom, try these:
by Cho Nam-joo, Jamie Chang
Published 2021
A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea's new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman's psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.
by Jerry Pinto
Published 2014
Em and the Big Hoom is a modern masterpiece, an accomplished debut that is graceful and urgent, with a one-of-a-kind voice that will stay with readers long after the last page.
Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Abraham Verghese, bestselling author of Cutting for Stone
Kyung-sook Shin has managed some kind of alchemy in this novel. Weaving together four vivid voices - of daughter, son, husband, and mother, each with the immediacy of a whispered confession - she has created a heartbreaking family mystery. Here is a deeply felt journey into a culture foreign to many - yet with a theme that is universal in its appeal. A terrific novel that stayed with me long after I'd finished its final, haunting pages. This is a real discovery.
