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a grace that nobody could disturb. Deep sighs escape your lips. The Holy Mother’s dainty lips have moved beyond the sorrow in her eyes toward compassion. You look at her dead son again. The son’s arms and legs are splayed peacefully across his mother’s knees. She is soothing him even in death. If you’d told anyone in the family that you were going on a trip, they would have taken that to mean that you had given up on finding Mom. Since you had no way to convince them otherwise, you came to Rome without telling anyone. Did you come here to see the Pietà? When Yu-bin suggested that you join him in Italy, you might have unconsciously thought of this sculpture. Perhaps you wanted to pray in this place, pray that you could see for one last time the woman who lived in a small country attached to the edge of the vast Asian continent, to find her, and this is why you came here. Then again, maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe you already understood that Mom didn’t exist in this world anymore. Maybe you came here because you wanted to plead: Please don’t forget Mom, please take pity on Mom. But now that you see the statue on the other side of the glass, sitting on a pedestal, embracing with her frail arms all of mankind’s sorrow since the Creation, you can’t say anything. You stare at the Holy Mother’s lips intently. You close your eyes, back away, and leave that place. A line of priests passes, probably on their way to celebrate mass. You walk out to the entrance of the basilica and look down, dazed, at the piazza surrounded by long cloisters and enshrined in brilliant light. And only then do the words you couldn’t say in front of the statue leak out from between your lips.

“Please, please look after Mom.”

Reading Group Guide

Please Look After Mom

by Kyung-sook Shin

About this guide

The discussion questions and topics that follow are intended to enhance your group’s conversation about Kyung-sook Shin’s Please Look After Mom, at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

About this book

A million-plus-copy best seller in Korea, with publication scheduled in twenty-three countries, Please Look After Mom is the magnificent English-language debut of a stunning, brilliant new voice.

The story opens with a mysterious disappearance: On a family visit to the city, Mom is right behind her husband when the train pulls out of Seoul Station without her, and she is lost, possibly forever. As her children argue over how to find her and her husband returns to their home in the country to wait for her, they each recall their lives with her, their memories often more surprising than comforting. Through the piercing voices of daughter, son, and husband, and through Mom’s own words in the novel’s shattering conclusion, we learn what happened that day, and explore an even deeper mystery—of motherhood itself.

For discussion

1. While second-person (“you”) narration is an uncommon mode, it is used throughout the novel’s first section (the tale of the daughter, Chi-hon) and third section (the tale of the husband). What is the effect of this choice? How does it reflect these characters’ feelings about Mom? Why do you think Mom is the only character who tells her story in the first person?

2. What do we learn about the relationship between Chi-hon and her mother? What are the particular sources of tension or resentment between them? Why does Chi-hon say to her brother, “Maybe I’m being punished …” (this page)?

3. Why is it significant that Chi-hon is a successful writer, and how does her career affect her position in the family? What does this mean for her relationship to her mother, who is illiterate? How does it happen that her mother begins to treat Chi-hon like “a guest” when she visits home (this page)?

4. Mom’s life has been defined by her relationships to others and the needs of her family. When her daughter asks her, “Did you like to cook?” how does Mom’s reply summarize the divide between her own and her daughter’s generations (this page)? How is the generational gap between you and your