walaalamageeddow 's review for:

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin

4.5

emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn’t dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of Mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you.



“I will let go of you now. You were my secret. You were in my life, someone whose presence would never be guessed by anyone who knew me. Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell you that I was able to travel through my life because I could come to you when I was anxious, not when I was happy.I’m going to go now.”