nomadreader

Translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim The basics: Kyong-Sook Shin is a famous Korean writer who has won several awards internationally. Please Look After Mom is her first book to be translated into English. It tells the story of a mother who goes missing one afternoon in a crowded Seoul subway station. The story is told in the voices of her children and husband as they search for her, remember her and face their regrets. My thoughts: Please Look After Mom opens in a somewhat bracing way. The reader is addressed as "you," which is jarring, but in a good way. Still, I scrambled for a few pages to get my bearings in the scene, the country, the family, and the character. As the novel moved into different sections, the narrator's language shifted to first-person. It was an interesting narrative tool, and I appreciated the boldness of Shin to force the reader to figure out which characters was now telling his or her story. There was no road map to this novel, just as m...