Kyung-sook Shin "Please Look After Mom"
"When was the last time you’d told Mom about something that had happened to you? At a certain point, the conversations between you and Mom became simplified. Even that was not done face to face, but by telephone. Your words had to do with whether she ate, whether she was healthy, how Father was, that she should be careful not to catch cold, that you were sending money."
This is a story about people reflecting on life and what they’ve lost - after their mother (sixty-nine-year-old Park So-Nyo) goes missing at Seoul Station, having missed her train.
It’s a powerful premise, but I found it hard to fully believe. The daughter, who spent her whole life rebelling against her mom, suddenly becomes willing to compromise and change everything about herself. The son is filled with guilt that he didn’t fulfill her dreams and vows to try harder for her. And the husband, who never gave a damn about his wife for fifty years, starts ruminating on how wonderful she actually was and how he’d never really known or cared to learn anything about her.
That said, the wife always came off a bit eccentric (according to the memories), so the strange relationships around her kind of made sense.
Of course, there are cultural differences to consider - these are parents who grew up in hard times. But it also reminded me of my own parents. Yes, they too were shaped by difficult times. But does that automatically excuse some of the deep damage they caused us? I don’t think so.
My heart ached through this entire novel. So many lives torn apart by war. And how many more will be affected when these people raise children, and then those children have children of their own? You start to see how much pain everyone carried - and why they were the way they were - but it doesn’t make the husband’s self-pity any easier to read. He admits he never cared for his wife, never tried to get to know her or care for her… so what kind of love is he grieving now? He didn’t love her - he was just used to her being there. Used to being served, argued with, listened to. That’s not love. That’s routine. Maybe no one ever taught him what love looks like.
For me, the main take from this book was a reminder to try living in a way that leaves fewer regrets. Regrets for things said or unsaid, done or left undone, dreams unpursued. Every character in the book is haunted by guilt - by what they did to their mom, how they treated her, how they failed to understand her. And yet, the mother also had things to regret. So if people are capable of such deep reflection, why didn’t it happen sooner?
For me, that’s the wake-up call: to reflect more often. To train myself to be softer in my responses, to not miss the small chances to be kind, to show up for someone. It’s not easy to shift out of our daily routines and thinking patterns - but it’s possible, and no one can do it for us. At the same time, this book reminded me that if you regret something in your family relationships, chances are the other person might also be quietly doing the same. And sometimes it’s for reasons you’d never expect. That’s why conversations (especially grown-up, honest ones) matter. We assume family will always be there. But that’s not true.
We forget that our family members deserve the same basic respect we give to everyone else.
And more than anything, this novel reminded me of how little we truly know about one another. How every person is quietly going through something (past, present, or future) that we may never guess. Sure, you can judge someone in the moment, based on your own logic or morals, but that doesn’t erase what shaped them. It doesn’t mean their pain isn’t real.
Of course this book completely wrecked me. It brought up all those thoughts I usually try to bury - about how my family used to be, how it is now, and whether I’m making choices I’ll regret later. I absolutely recommend it. 10/10. But if you’re not ready to cry your way through the novel or to have all the heart wounds open maybe skip Please Look After Mom.
"I’m sorry for going to see you every time I felt unsettled, but not even letting you hold my hand. Even though I went to you, when it seemed like you were coming to me I acted unkindly. That wasn’t very nice of me. I’m sorry, so sorry. At first it was because I felt awkward, then because I felt we shouldn’t, and later it was because I was old. You were my sin and my happiness. I wanted to seem dignified in your eyes."