VOL.69/2024.04

Please Look After Mom by Shin Kyung-sook

2024.04.01

The novel Please Look After Mom (Changbi) sold one million copies within 10 months of its first edition, which was in 2009. This novel is one of my favorite novels ever. This is a story about the loss of a mother at Seoul subway station after her husband preceded her and left her outside the train. But the question here is, Will her children try to find her? Will she return to her husband? That woman spent her life sacrificing everything until the day she disappeared, and that mother did her best to help her family and cared more about Her family’s life than her life while she was in so much pain. When she got los, everyone got to know her real worth when it was too late.

Actually, I like that book so much, and it became one of my favorite K-Books. I know this is the reality of the world. The author got a lot of inspiration for this novel from somewhere around her, and this is why it is so well written. This book has a very powerful emotion, and it has a lot of deep meanings. After reading the book, you will know that we do not feel the value of something except when we lose it. It also has a lot of textures that reflect real life. This book will force you to face difficult questions about your own life, and actually, it changed some things in me, and made me focus more on my own relationships in this life, so I recommend it a lot.
I want to introduce Some quotes I liked from Please Look After Mom.

How can you only do what you like?
Whether you like it or not, there are things you must do.

You have always regarded your mother as the kitchen and the kitchen as your mother,
and you have never wondered whether your mother likes working in the kitchen or no.

It is the silence of the dead that drives the living crazy.

Only after she disappeared did her presence become tangible in your life,
as if you could reach out and touch her.

She sang softly, “If the vast sea had not separated you and me,
this painful separation would not have occurred between us.”

Written by Kim Gomana (Reader of K-Book Trends)