Reviews with content warning for War - Please Look After Mother

Reviews tagging 'War'

Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin

7 reviews

serena_hien's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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cassie7e's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Incredibly sad and reflective. Interestingly, the second person narration did not feel weird, and since the audiobook uses different voices for different people it wasn't confusing either.

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buntatamilis's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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fkshg8465's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Gosh, this book was difficult for me. Reminded me of The Giving Tree. My mother loved that book because of the Christian symbolism, but I suspect it was also because she identified with the tree. She read this book as well and asked me to read it too. I’d forgotten about that until today. Now I wish I’d read it while she was alive, while she was reading it too, so we could’ve discussed it together. Thus, this book was hard to read because it made me pine for my mother who was similarly a long-suffering saint like the book's mother and wife. And it’s compounding my grief, the grief that is ever present. I feel like this mother character could be any Korean mother. I think that’s a key reason for the book’s success.

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ash445's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I found this book so interesting! If I had to describe what it's about, I'd say that it's about losing things/people and how often you lose something/one before you actually physically lose it/them and also about the roles that women play as mothers. I loved how the pov shifted with different chapters including moving from second person to third person. I had been viewing the role women take as mothers negatively throughout the book, and I was delighted that Shin Kyungsook explicitly challenged that near the end. I think it will be a deeply relatable read for anyone who has a complicated relationship with their mother or with motherhood.

Shin Kyungsook is a really interesting storyteller. I think there's a lot of deep stuff going on that I can't see due to my limitations as a reader. It's really cool to be able to feel it even though I can't see it :)

Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness

Moderate: Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Infidelity, Child abuse, Death, and Dementia

Minor: Animal death, Miscarriage, War, and Suicide

Suicide:

Park Sonyo's brother-in-law dies by suicide. They were close and she's accused of murdering him. The suicide itself is not explained in detail and is also not explicitly named for what it is

Infidelity:

Park Sonyo's husband cheats on her, and she temporarily leaves the home while the woman he is cheating on her with is living there. This woman tries to take on the role of mother with the kids, and the eldest son rejects her efforts. Her husband and the woman end up leaving and traveling together for some time, and the husband eventually returns. Park Sonyo may have technically cheated on her husband? This is unclear. There is a man she spends a great deal of time with and seems to think she might have viewed him romantically

Child Abuse:

This may be a controversial tag. I think the child abuse is expected for the time period. I personally consider very seriously yelling at kids, guilting them with your potential death, and hitting them all as abuse. The kids are hit with switches, sometimes until they bleed, in situations when their actions are deemed severe by the mother. One of the daughters is also berated fairly extremely for what I felt was an age appropriate, though admittedly extreme, action. It is clear also imo that these actions come from a place of parents not knowing any different.

Animal Death: it's a farming family, so there's some mention of butchering animals but not in detail, and there's a slightly more detailed description of a dog passing away Chronic Illness/Dementia:

I'm not totally sure about whether Park Sonyo has dementia as it's only her symptoms that are described. She has memory loss, confusion, intense headaches/migraines regularly. These incapacitate her. She describes the pain from her headaches in detail. She also at one point has breast cancer that is neglected until it becomes physically visible on her breast

Miscarriage:

One of Park Sonyo's pregnancy results in a stillbirth, and she buries the baby herself. This isn't described in great detail I don't think and also makes her concerned for her following pregnancy

The parents lived through the Korean War and there is description of some of their experiences but this is largely devoid of explicit violence against the parents. The impacts of the war are felt throughout their lives.

Park Sonyo is spotted after her disappearance with a cut on her foot caused by her sandal digging in. At one point, this is describe in some detail that I personally found a little difficult to hear because it was infected.

Death of Parent/Death:

Park Sonyo does pass away. The family never finds her so they don't have explicit confirmation of this. Part of the story follows Park Sonyo after death viewing her youngest daughter and her home. The details of her death are not explained in detail

painausten314's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I wasn’t used to the second-person narration used in this novel, but once I understood the flow of the story, I was hooked.

This story had me thinking long and hard about my own mother and her role in my life. It was an emotionally complex and heartbreaking story. I hope to read more of this author’s work.

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marywahlmeierbracciano's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Please Look After Mom is a heartbreaking book. It follows a Korean family as they look for their mother, who went missing at the subway station during a trip to Seoul. Her two daughters, eldest son, and husband recount their memories with her, leaping between past and present—grieving, regretting, hoping. Kyung-sook Shin’s title character also narrates her journey, the unacknowledged Passion of a poor, illiterate Korean country woman with secrets and sorrows, attending to the smallest details with great care. This book reminds readers that every person is a whole, complex human being who deserves care and respect—even your mom.

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