Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - Please Look After Mother

Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin

7 reviews

oneslowreader's review against another edition

emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

this book has consistently made me reflect on how i lead and have lead my relationship with my parents and my romantic relationship, and how could i continue to keep them this way. i mean this book is such a sweet, sad, and so heartfelt, its made me grateful for the people who are around me, especially my mom.

Content Warnings

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

juksu's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-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

4.25

While reading (listening to) this book, my most common emotion was devastation. Quite a few tears, some of joy, but most of profound grief for every mother and every child who's lived this life, including my own relatives. Perhaps because I am very close with my mother, this book hit me really hard. In discussing this book with me, my mom told me So-nyo sounds like her own grandmothers, who immigrated from Korea to Japan. Both women, long gone, are complete strangers to my mother not just because of their low Japanese fluency, but because in their families, they weren't people. They were mothers, defined by sacrifice and silence. Unbreakable and invisible.

From a less personal standpoint, I feel like this was also just a good book. Each of the individual voices was distinct (and not just because each had a separate reader!), and the translation is great. I think it provided some very thought-provoking commentary on this sort of sacrificial motherhood. Within the role of mother that she has been forced to inhabit, So-nyo does indeed love her children, however she chooses—or is forced to—show it. (Children of Asian parents whose love language is acts of service, please stand up.) Some people say they're unsatisfied with the ending, but I feel like any other ending would subvert the entire point of the novel. Which apparently was to wreck me emotionally.

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dlrosebyh's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

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

3.75

When So-nyo, 69, gets separated from her husband and vanishes among the crowds of the Seoul metro station, their children are overwhelmed with loud recriminations and are soaked in sadness and shame. As they debate the size of the prize to offer and the best way to phrase the language on the "Missing" flyers they are distributing across the city, they realize that none of them have a current image of Mom. Soon, a broader issue arises: do they actually know the lady they refer to as Mom?

The novel, told in the alternating voices of Mom's daughter, son, husband, and, in the shocking conclusion, Mom herself, pieces together a life that appears ordinary but is anything but.

I expected a novel about a mother to hit me deeply. This review is most likely on for me. As a matter of fact, I never had a close relationship with my mother. I expected a book about someone's mother's death to be very moving for me. I don't believe I ever "loved" my mother, therefore I know it's something that would remain a fantasy for me. Nonetheless, I like this book a lot. I have nothing more to say.

Content Warnings

parasolcrafter's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

this book made me. so sad...

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thewordsdevourer's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.0

It's quite difficult to sum up my mix of emotions towards this book. On one hand, I do think the summary put my hopes up too high, while on the other the book also succeeds exactly what it sets out to do.

Please Look After Mother's simplicity is, in my opinion, its biggest weakness and strength. The story moves along at a leisurely pace w/o any real sense of urgency, and any semblance of excitement is tempered by the fact that the majority of the story happens in the past and ultimately doesn't alter the ultimate outcome of So-nyo's disappearance. This simplicity, however, also underlines the glaringly obvious yet simultaneously unseen and unacknowledged presence and 'being-ness' of mothers, which makes the book's message so searing and searingly frightening.

While the book could certainly have been at least a little more complex or exciting, it still results in altered tangible real life behavior on my part, which might be what matters most.

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linguaphile412's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

2.0

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