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

Please Look After Mom

I could not stop listening to this book! It tells the story from the inside the soul of a mother lost to Alzheimer's Disease. I lost my beloved mother to this disease so it hit home for me. Beautifully told and written.

classic korean sentimentality

this book has its highly emotional and moving moments and makes you reflect on your relationships with those closest to you, or at least it did for me. however i found myself losing interest during the last few chapters. its not one of those novels you cant put down, but still an enjoyable read/listen.

Odd narration but interesting (sad) story

Would you try another book from Kyung-Sook Shin and Chi-Young Kim (translator) and/or the narrators?

Probably not

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Anti climactic. Really no resolution to the story.

What three words best describe the narrators’s performance?

there were actually multiple narrators which I liked rather than having one person try to do both genders.

Did Please Look After Mom inspire you to do anything?

appreciate my mother more

Worth the Effort

I agree with the other reviewers that the narration took a bit to get used to. But I found it worth the wait. It is a poignant story of how a mother loves her children and how, in tragedy, they view their mother in an entirely different light. It reminded me in some ways of "Bridges of Madison County" in that her children were surprised by her "real" life only when she was gone.

Wow!! Just wow!

This book was so touching and will definitely stay with me for a long while — heart moving and poignant ❤️

Insightful and Relatable

I remember wanting to read this book when the English translation was first released in print, but then forgot about it. Then it came up in a pop-up ad on another site, and my interest was piqued once again.

As many of my previous reviews have indicated, I do like family and relationship dissonance, dysfunction and ambivalence as bases for a story, and many of my favorite reads have explored this arena of human interaction from a variety of angles, and using a variety of plot situations and narrative techniques. But I thought this was a little heavy on the emotional introspection, with not enough emphasis on the story. Or put another way, for my taste, the evolution of present-day relationships was explored too much from the past, in terms of backstories, and I wanted to hear more about how the siblings actually went about finding Mom. I realized all along that actually finding Mom was not the main point of the story, and that the book was more about exploring a family from the inside, from various points of view, and in various voices.

Bottom line is, I wish there was more time/space devoted to the present and less on the past, and I thought the backstories were too slow - for me, anyway. Sometimes, depending on how a book is constructed, it's possible to fast-forward to what interests me if I get really frustrated with how the story is moving, but this book kept alternating between past and present with very fluid motion and one could easily miss some unexpectedly wonderful insights by skipping parts.

The various narrative voices did not bother or confuse me, as I have read a few successful (IMO) novels using the second person. Seems to be a focus that's being explored by some writers. The narrators were all excellent and interpreted each character perfectly (another IMO); I have always loved listening to Mark Bramhall, and perhaps not so coincidentally, he is one of the narrators in "The Night Strangers" by Chris Bohjalian, another novel that's partially in the second person.

I'm glad I found this on audible.

Odd narration but interesting (sad) story

Would you try another book from Kyung-Sook Shin and Chi-Young Kim (translator) and/or the narrators?

Probably not

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Anti climactic. Really no resolution to the story.

What three words best describe the narrators???s performance?

there were actually multiple narrators which I liked rather than having one person try to do both genders.

Did Please Look After Mom inspire you to do anything?

appreciate my mother more

Is That Your 3rd Person?

While the story was good and the narration vivid, I was hoping for more. The third person narration made it less interesting.

Great read!

Loved how they had several narrators for the characters. This book is emotional, but definitely recommended.

If you've ever had a Mom . . . .

I tossed in bed in the wee hours of this morning, thinking about this story and wondering what I could say in my review to convey what it meant to me. That is not always easy and too many superlatives can be off-putting. I had been tossing around the idea of listening to this audio book for a long time and only recently acquired it, figuring it was about time.

In summary, the elderly "Mom" of the family gets left behind on a subway platform in Seoul, Korea. She was supposed to be following behind her husband and he never bothered to look behind him until the train was pulling away. It appears Mom may be in the early stages of Alzheimer's, although her family is in denial and seemingly unaware of this. In addition, Mom has other untreated medical problems which might make her return and even her survival more complicated.

The book is written from four points of view after mom goes missing--a daughter, a son, her husband, and mom, herself. It is oddly written in the second person in a way I never encountered before. I didn't mind it at all, once I realized what was occurring. This is a translation and I do not expect it to sound like standard English. For me, it worked just fine.

This book gradually took hold of my heart. Mom's son, daughter, and husband had a lot of time to ruminate, as they scrambled to try to find her. Each one had their own recriminations, regrets, insights and memories of Mom. Each felt like they didn't really know or truly appreciate Mom, who had been the backbone of the family, always there to cater to their needs, seemingly selfless. But Mom was not quite as selfless as everyone believed and had kept some mysteries and secrets of her own. Her longstanding, secret friendship with a neighbor was one of the most touching parts of the story for me.

Mom is one of the four voices in this story. I hesitate to describe this further for fear of spoiling the story for you. Listen carefully. Then come to your own conclusions.

This is a beautiful, incredibly touching story (with a bit of magical realism) that will remain with me for a very long time. It deserves and calls for a great deal of attention, which I regret I did not fully give it. For that reason and because it is such a relevant, unusual story, I will listen to it a second time.