We are back on familiar ground, only to find that the rug has been pulled out from under our feet in the third section: another second person narrative, this time told from the husband's point of view.īy the time we get to the fourth section, where we get to hear Mother's own voice, we feel that we have begun to rediscover her. We learn more about key family relationships. The second section is written in the third person from the perspective of one of the sons. Powerful as the opening section is, one of the real strengths of the book is that it does not over-rely on the second person narrative. There is no willing suspension of disbelief here: Please Look After Mother is a moving and highly successful call to action. Challenged by the second person narrative, we move from deep immersion in the South Korean world of the novel and find ourselves contemplating our own situation. We start thinking about the way we treat our own mothers. Then something strange happens, or at least it happened to me. How can Mother have gone missing from Seoul station? How can we have neglected her needs? How are we going to get her back? Like the family about whom Kyung-Sook Shin writes so beau tifully, we feel confused, guilty and desperate. Rather than being comfortably in control of the book, we find ourselves struggling to make sense of the situation. What is the effect of this unusual approach? In a word: bewilderment.

You, the reader, are drawn into the crisis whether you like it or not. But protests are in vain because this is the rarest of books: a second person narrative. This is how Kyung-Sook Shin’s Please Look After Mother starts and immediately the protests begin. You decide to make flyers and hand them out where Mother was last seen. The family is gathered at your eldest brother Hyong-chol’s house, bouncing ideas off each other. It’s been one week since Mother went missing.

Please look after my mother