Please Look After Mom

A mother goes missing in the Seoul subway. As her children search for her, they begin to realize how little they knew about the woman who gave them everything. Shin Kyung-sook’s international bestseller is Korean literature’s great novel of family guilt.

Why Read This

Please Look After Mom is told from multiple perspectives: the eldest daughter, the son, the husband, and the mother herself. Each voice reveals a different facet of a woman who sacrificed everything for her family and was never truly seen in return. It is a novel about the specific shape of Korean filial duty, about the distance between gratitude and attention, about realizing too late what someone meant to you.

The novel sold over two million copies in South Korea and became the first Korean novel to win a major international prize (the Man Asian Literary Prize). It works as a counterpoint to the other books here: where Han Kang and Cho Nam-joo write about women who resist their assigned roles, Shin Kyung-sook writes about a woman who fulfilled hers completely, and the tragedy of what that cost her.

What to Expect

An emotionally powerful novel that will make you think about your own mother. The shifting perspectives keep the narrative fresh. More conventionally structured than The Vegetarian, with a clear emotional arc. Bring tissues.