Please Look After Mom

By: Kyung-Sook Shin, Chi-Young Kim - translator

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Samantha Quan, Janet Song, Bruce Turk

Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

A million-plus-copy best seller in Korea - a magnificent English-language debut poised to become an international sensation - this is the stunning, deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway.

Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

You will never think of your mother the same way again after you listen to this book.

©2011 Kyung-Sook Shin (P)2011 Random House

​Bought This for My Umma

​I ended up buying the Korean print edition of "Please Look After Mom" for my umma. Since Audible had the English version, I thought that I would give it a listen. It made me appreciate my mom and halmeoni even more. My grandma passed away 20 years ago and when I was listening how the author was describing the main character, I could imagine what my grandma went through in the old country with my dad and my aunts.

I never knew my grandpa, but I could imagined that my grandma went through a similar life with her husband and be forgotten. Maybe that's why my dad treated his mom with respect and dignity that she deserved. Maybe that's why our dad always taught his children to put our mom and aunts on a higher level than him.

As for the novel by Shin Kyung-sook, it's something to preserve overtime and read again. As a first generation Korean American, I feel that I don't understand my heritage because my parents worked so hard to have a life in the United States. This book was a bit of a history lesson for me. I never really understood why had to do Jesa (ancestors ceremony) every year when I was growing up. It made no sense to me, celebrating someone that is dead and I never met. This book was helpful to understand ancestors ceremonies.

The husband's prospective of missing his wife was most interesting to me. I could remembered my dad explaining to me and my brothers to be better to our mom and to our future mates. "Please Look After Mom" explains a lot of the Korean culture and the male role in the family. I'm assuming that it wasn't common for the man to show affection to his wife and family.

This is probably one of the best book that I'm read in a long time, outside my common genres.

Moving Story

This was not a book I would have chosen on my own, but I read it as it was my book club's choice for the month. I found the story to be deeply moving and a wonderful choice for a book club discussion. The author uses several narrators, mostly members of the missing woman's family, to tell the woman's story and the way her life affected theirs. Beautifully touching.

Best book I've read

What made the experience of listening to Please Look After Mom the most enjoyable?

I viewed it as awarning to take care of your elders especially your Mom. They have worked hard for many years and hardly ever get a thank you. You need to look after your loved ones now before its too late.

Wonderful narrators

The readers especially Samantha Quran brought the story to life. I was so moved by their performances.

Interesting but not up to it's hype

The insights into rapid shifts in generational values is pretty great. But I found the story line just OK and the conclusion not up to expections set by first half of book.

A book that keeps you thinking

At first, the writing was a little annoying in that the author/reader referred to herself in the third person, but I got over that. I like the way several family members got their chance to tell the story from their perspective. While they were all reminiscing and peeling layers off the family and their memories of mom, the story kept moving forward. I feel like I got some insight into this family and I keep thinking of them from time to time. That, to me, is a good book - one I remember long after I have read it.

Oh, This reads like a story of a "Missing Elderly"

I couldn't imagine the pain that would be felt if this actually happened, but it isn't that far fetched. Often you can hear news reports of an elderly person walking away from a retirement home, but the heartbreak doesn't play out as well as when a child is missing.
In this book you can feel the pain of the family as they realize the details of their missing mother. They describe how they'd taken her for granted, gotten angry at her, abused her, and ignored the truth about her coming age and illness. The past is described in such detail, you live their lives; each member of the family, and know the regret, the resentment, the heartbreak that Mom must have felt all her life. But as mothers do, she kept it hidden in her deepest parts of her heart.

Wonderful tale of a woman who no one truly knew

I really enjoyed this book, both the story and the performances. I felt transplanted in Korea and the character development was wonderful, for each major character had his/her distinct personality and quirks, even how they developed over time: childhood to adulthood. You got to see "Mom" in their own view and the differences between also added to the distinctions between the characters. Hearing Mom's own voice at the end of the book was a great ending, though I was still a little confused as to what exactly happened to her.

The second person use in the book was not odd as some may believe. It adds to the book's charm and uniqueness. It definitely would not be the same book if it had used third person. The narrators did an amazing job with the second person and made it comfortable. Because of this, I am interested in more novels that use the second person.

It makes you think about your own relationship with the important people, particularly women, in your life. Overall, I am very happy that I found this book and I highly recommend it.

Compassionate and poignant

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, the story line from my points out how easily we all take things for granted.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

yes, it was great!

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No

Daughter wrote, Mom approved.

I didn't read it in Korean, my mother tongue, because I thought it was one of just tear-gas drama. I got this audiobook because I wanted to see if the translation was all right as the media say. The second-person narrative at first was hard to take but having listened it through I realized that was indeed the ingenious part of the novel. Even though this is not an ordinary page-turner style of novel with a classical plot which makes you climb up to the climax or dramatic ending, and it is about Korean woman whose life was simply an ordeal dictated by contemporary Korean history which may make it hard to understand for ordinary listeners, it is a timeless tribute to every mother and her dedication to her children.
Author said she decided to write one in her teens for her Mom sleeping exhausted in the night train heading for a big city for the hope of the author's career, and my mom declared it a “must-see” for her daughter after seeing the musical of this novel recently. Kudos for author, translator, editors, and the narrators.