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lakmus 's review for:
Please Look After Mom
by Kyung-sook Shin
DID NOT FINISH
DNF ~30%
I suspect (hope?) there are issues with the translation because the language is so flat and listless it contributed to at least fifty percent of my annoyance.
The other fifty percent is The Family Drama plot, which was right there on the blurb, to be fair. Mom disappeared, none of the children cared enough about her, for no apparent reason (up to that point). On the last couple of pages she is compared to the literal virgin Mary. Laying it on a bit thick.
Interesting descriptions of life in rural Korea, the calendar of ancestral rites, etc. Somewhat suspicious of the premise that she was illiterate, but it's hard to place when this was exactly and I don't know at what point Korea reached ubiquitous literacy. A bit weird that her kids (one of them a writer) never took the time to teach her the alphabet? Korean is not terribly difficult to read.
I suspect (hope?) there are issues with the translation because the language is so flat and listless it contributed to at least fifty percent of my annoyance.
The other fifty percent is The Family Drama plot, which was right there on the blurb, to be fair. Mom disappeared, none of the children cared enough about her, for no apparent reason (up to that point). On the last couple of pages she is compared to the literal virgin Mary. Laying it on a bit thick.
Interesting descriptions of life in rural Korea, the calendar of ancestral rites, etc. Somewhat suspicious of the premise that she was illiterate, but it's hard to place when this was exactly and I don't know at what point Korea reached ubiquitous literacy. A bit weird that her kids (one of them a writer) never took the time to teach her the alphabet? Korean is not terribly difficult to read.