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erininak 's review for:
Please Look After Mom
by Kyung-sook Shin
Fiction in translation is usually like forced sexual orientation -- the story goes through the motions but you can't possibly appreciate what's most beautiful with such a huge degree of separation from true passion. Every few years I decide my refusal to read translated fiction is selling me short and every time I make an exception (most recently with the dull My Brilliant Friend) I give up on the book half way because it fails to capture me. I savor books written in English by and about characters in other cultures, but translation can't help but shortchange a book, somehow selling out the subtleties found to the original language along with any sense of the author. Please Look After Mom is a brilliant exception.
The book as a whole examines the nature of care taking, mostly mother-to-child but also wife-to-husband, among friends (soulmates?), and, finally, by the divine. There's an obnoxiousness to its architecture, with the story told from various family member's perspectives after a matriarch goes missing, yet the chapters still captivate. Each segment shows us the shock and, eventually, resignation So-nyo's family member experiences, replete with backstory. Other reviewers have commented that matriarch So-nyo, is portrayed as almost heroically self-sacrificing but I saw her as an ordinary, hard-working mum. Within each chapter, we're given a glimpse into both what So-nyo did for her loved ones and how (only occasionally, in most cases) they cared for her. Some characters were long plagued with guilt, more than gratitude, for their mother's help and support while others appreciated her belatedly, only after she'd gone.
All of this sounds formulaic, even a hackneyed and archetypically Asian, like a vomitorium of filial piety. It could easily have been, but author Shin's creation and translator Kim's words bypass trope and cut straight to the universal. Whether or not your own parents provided much, in reading this book you feel the narrators' grief acutely. Few books have evoked such intense, spontaneous tears for me at their ending. I'm sure this work is far more affecting in the original Korean, but even in English, it packs a punch.
The book as a whole examines the nature of care taking, mostly mother-to-child but also wife-to-husband, among friends (soulmates?), and, finally, by the divine. There's an obnoxiousness to its architecture, with the story told from various family member's perspectives after a matriarch goes missing, yet the chapters still captivate. Each segment shows us the shock and, eventually, resignation So-nyo's family member experiences, replete with backstory. Other reviewers have commented that matriarch So-nyo, is portrayed as almost heroically self-sacrificing but I saw her as an ordinary, hard-working mum. Within each chapter, we're given a glimpse into both what So-nyo did for her loved ones and how (only occasionally, in most cases) they cared for her. Some characters were long plagued with guilt, more than gratitude, for their mother's help and support while others appreciated her belatedly, only after she'd gone.
All of this sounds formulaic, even a hackneyed and archetypically Asian, like a vomitorium of filial piety. It could easily have been, but author Shin's creation and translator Kim's words bypass trope and cut straight to the universal. Whether or not your own parents provided much, in reading this book you feel the narrators' grief acutely. Few books have evoked such intense, spontaneous tears for me at their ending. I'm sure this work is far more affecting in the original Korean, but even in English, it packs a punch.