Please Look After Mother

Combining a unique setting with universal themes, PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER is a beautifully rendered novel about sacrifice, guilt, and the ties of family love.PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER is the story of So-nyo, a wife and mother, who has lived a life of sacrifice and compromise. In the past she suffered a stroke, leaving her vulnerable and often confused. Now, travelling from the Korean countryside to the Seoul of her grown-up children, So-nyo is separated from her husband when the doors close on a packed train.As her children and husband search the streets, they recall So-nyo's life, and all they have left unsaid. Through their piercing voices, we begin to discover the desires, heartaches, and secrets she harboured within. And as the mystery of her disappearance unravels, we uncover a larger mystery, that of all mothers and children: how affection, exasperation, hope and guilt add up to love. Compassionate, redemptive and beautifully written, PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER will reconnect you to the story of your own family, and to the forgotten sacrifices that lie at its heart.

Shin, Kyung-Sook

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.

Please Look After Mom

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Random House Canada

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. From the Hardcover edition.

United States

Vintage Canada

WINNER OF THE MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE 
When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mom? Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

Please Look After Mom: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

Vintage

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

The two-million copy bestseller and winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize, about a woman who disappears on a train platform, and her family's search to find her\nWINNER OF THE MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE\nWhen sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mother?\nTold through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.\n'Kyung-Sook Shin's tale... has hit a nerve' Guardian\n'A 
raw tribute to the mysteries of motherhood' New York Times Book Review\n'The most moving and accomplished, and often startling, novel' Wall Street Journal

Contemporary

Hachette

Translated by Anton Hur\n'Mesmerising, dreamlike and prescient in its sharpness and attentiveness to the dynamics between women and the male and female gaze' Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti\n'Darkly beautiful, VIOLETS explores the toll of abandonment and relentless marginalisation' Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face\n'Violets lavishes attention on the kind of person who often slips through the cracks, unseen or ignored. There is a beauty and a bravery in speaking for small lives' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You\n'Has a way of seeing past the smooth surface of societal appearance and into the fragile, obscure psychological space that lies just beneath' Alexandra Kleenman, author of Something New Under the Sun\n'An intimate portrait of isolation and unspoken desire. Darkly poetic, dreamlike and meditative' Adelle Stripe, author of Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile\nSouth Korea, 1970.\nSan is a lonely child, ostracised from her community. She soon finds a friend in a girl called Namae, until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path.\nWe next meet San, aged twenty-two, when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul's bustling city centre. Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San is introduced to a curious cast of characters - the mute shop owner, a brash co-worker, kind farmers and aggressive customers - and fuelled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer. Throughout it all, San's moment with Namae continues to linger in the back of her mind.\nA story of thwarted desire, misogyny and erasure, Violets reveals the high stakes involved in one woman's desperate search for both autonomy and attachment in an unforgiving society.

Violets

[Translated by Ha-yun Jung] [Read by Emily Woo Zeller] The highly anticipated release of the most personal novel by Kyung-sook Shin, who first burst onto the literary scene with the New York Times bestseller Please Look after Mom Homesick and alone, a teenage girl has just arrived in Seoul to work in a factory. Her family, still in the countryside, is too impoverished to keep sending her to school, so she works long, sunless days on a stereo assembly line, struggling through night school every evening in order to achieve her dream of becoming a writer. Korea's brightest literary star sets this complex and nuanced coming-of-age story against the backdrop of Korea's industrial sweatshops of the 1970s and takes on the extreme exploitation, oppression, and urbanization that helped catapult Korea's economy out of the ashes of war. But it was girls like Shin's heroine who formed the bottom of Seoul's rapidly changing social hierarchy, forgotten and ignored. Richly autobiographical, The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness lays bare the conflict and confusion Shin faces as she confronts her past and the sweeping social change of the past half-century. Cited in Korea as one of the most important literary novels of the decade, this novel cements Shin's legacy as one of the most insightful and exciting writers of her generation.

The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness Lib/E

Blackstone Publishing

By Man Asian Literary Prize winner Kyung-Sook Shin, "a moving delve into a lonely psyche" that follows a neglected young woman's search for human connection in contemporary Seoul (YZ Chin). 
San is twenty-two and alone when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul’s bustling city center. Haunted by childhood rejection, she stumbles through life—painfully vulnerable, stifled, and unsure. She barely registers to others, especially by the ruthless standards of 1990s South Korea. 
Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San meets a curious cast of characters: the nonspeaking shop owner, a brash coworker, quiet farmers, and aggressive customers. Fueled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer.\nIn Violets, best-selling author Kyung-Sook Shin explores misogyny, erasure, and repressed desire, as San desperately searches for both autonomy and attachment in the unforgiving reality of contemporary Korean society.

The Feminist Press at CUNY

How friendship, European literature, and a charismatic professor defy war, oppression, and the absurd Set in 1980s South Korea amid the tremors of political revolution, I’ll Be Right There follows Jung Yoon, a highly literate, twenty-something woman, as she recounts her tragic personal history as well as those of her three intimate college friends. When Yoon receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation, memories of a tumultuous youth begin to resurface, forcing her to re-live the most intense period of her life. With profound intellectual and emotional insight, she revisits the death of her beloved mother, the strong bond with her now-dying former college professor, the excitement of her first love, and the friendships forged out of a shared sense of isolation and grief. Yoon’s formative experiences, which highlight both the fragility and force of personal connection in an era of absolute uncertainty, become immediately palpable. Shin makes the foreign and esoteric utterly familiar: her use of European literature as an interpreter of emotion and experience bridges any gaps between East and West. Love, friendship, and solitude are the same everywhere, as this book makes poignantly clear.

I'll Be Right There: A Novel

Other Press

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Books by Shin, Kyung-Sook

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shin, Kyung-Sook. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Please Look After Mother

Please Look After Mom

Please Look After Mom

Please Look After Mom: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

Please Look After Mom

Please Look After Mother

Violets

The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness Lib/E

Violets

I'll Be Right There: A Novel