Please Look After Mom (2008) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

Write a summary of the plot or a synopsis of this book.

Characters/People edit see section history

• Park So-nyo: Wife, Mother, self-sacrificing, kind.
• Yun Hyong-chol: Oldest son of Park So-Nyo
• Kim: Add a description of this character.
• Chi-hon: Eldest daughter of Park So-nyo
• Kyun: Husband's youngest brother
• Shin Gu
• Baek Il Sup
• Hong Tae-hee

Quotes edit see section history

• “You don't understand why it took you so long to realize something so obvious. to you, Mother was always mother. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mother was Mother. she was born as Mother. 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 realisation led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. from then on, you sometimes thought of Mother as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newly-wed, as a mother who had just given birth to you.”

• “You had never thought of Mother as separate from the kitchen. Mother was the kitchen and the kitchen was the Mother.”

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• Either a mother and daughter know each other very well, or they are strangers.

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• The word “Mom” is familiar and it hides a plea: Please look after me. Please stop yelling at me and stroke my head; please be on my side, whether I’m right or wrong. You never stopped calling her Mom. Even now, when Mom’s missing. When you call out “Mom,” you want to believe that she’s healthy. That Mom is strong. That Mom isn’t fazed by anything. That Mom is the person you want to call whenever you despair about something in this city.

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• “If you only do what you like, who’s going to do what you don’t like?”

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• After your children’s mother went missing, you realized that it was your wife who was missing. Your wife, whom you’d forgotten about for fifty years, was present in your heart. Only after she disappeared did she come to you tangibly, as if you could reach out and touch her.

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• Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual—if one thinks about it, it’s really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn’t think things through.

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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.

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• Don’t be sad for me. I was happy so many days of my life because I had you.

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• When you did think about her, it was to ask her to do something, or to blame her or ignore her. Habit can be a frightening thing. You spoke politely with others, but your words turned sullen toward your wife. Sometimes you even cursed at her. You acted as if it had been decreed that you couldn’t speak politely to your wife. That’s what you did.

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• “Please … please look after your mom.”

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• Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Seoul Station
• Komso
• Rome
• Full Moon Harvest
• Vatican City, Rome
• Hope House
• America
• Chong-up

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Kyung-Sook Shin (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Man Asian Literary Prize (2011)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PL992.73.K94 O4613
• Dewey: 895.7/3

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary