Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

"IT’S BEEN ONE WEEK since Mom went missing."

This opening line, intriguing as it is, is also an announcement of an emotionally-fraught journey that awaits the reader and the gamut of possible arcs that this journey could take. Stunned by the possibilities, you wonder if this would be just another novel that promises the moon but crash lands with an insipid ending. After all, the success of this book would depend on whether the author does justice to the prospect of handling the missing mom. But once you yield to the allure of that first line, the narrative folds you in itself, revealing layer after complex layer of the intense human story, convincing you that the plot has indeed taken the best possible arc from start to finish.

Please Look After Mom captures the dynamics of a South Korean family scalded by steaming hot guilt in the wake of their mother's mysterious disappearance. Park Son-yo, a sixty-seven year old mother-of-five, disappears from a busy Seoul station while on her way to visit her children. An unaccountable grief accumulates in the family with the physical absence of the mother, drifting them into an infinite loop of remorse. The novel tackles the guilt that plagues the ethereal relationship between a mother and her children, and the various emotions that are unplugged in the family as they frantically try to find her. Four unique voices put together the story of the mother's life - that of a daughter, a son, the father, and then the mother herself.

The disappearance of the mother here is also a figurative representation of a mother's absence from the everyday lives of her busy grown-up children. The author explores the idea that mothers can be the most obscure beings, never understood, taken for granted by her children and husband. "Speaking at a symbolic level, many mothers of our generation, I believe, have gone missing or remain neglected,"  says the author in an interview,  "What we know about our mothers doesn’t always tell the whole story of who they are."

Kyung-Sook Shin's choice of telling this story through multiple perspectives lends a thoroughness to the plot, and the story comes a full circle in the portrayal of the missing mother's voice. The children spend an eternity believing in their own perspective about their family, without realizing how starkly different the perspective of a sibling or parent could be. As it happens, people can go through their entire life convinced that their mother favors another sibling over them; this ignominy might agonize them no end as a child and shape their behavior as an adult, but in their mother's heart might reside an entirely different way of looking at things. By writing the mother's point of view, the author exposes the folly of relying on just a single perspective to look at things. Guilt indeed goes two ways, flying back and forth between a mother and her child, in futility, both regretting things said or unsaid, the things done or not done. 

"Did Mom know? That I, too, needed her my entire life?" 

Not only is this novel transportitive, but it also speaks directly to you, across cultures, as an intense personal experience, igniting a yearning for your own mother. Every page feels like a portrayal of the maternal figures you have known up-close. Even the cultural aspect isn't alien; their tradition of ancestral rites, and the concept of rebirth as a bird, has unearthly similarity to the shraddha rituals followed in certain sects in India.

It is hard to make out that this is a work of translation; the narrative flows smoothly and there is not a word out of place. Even the Epilogue - which is usually a halfhearted scramble to tie up the loose threads of the story - reflects the dedication with which it has been conceived and written. Cathartic as it is for the daughter, it is an ideal closure for the reader as well.

This book is worth reading and re-reading for the rich, raw emotions that it strokes.

Kyung-sook Shin (born 1963) is one of South Korea’s most widely read and acclaimed novelists. She has been honored with the Manhae Literature Prize, the Dong-in Literature Prize, and the Yi Sang Literary Prize, as well as France’s Prix de l’Inaperçu. Please Look After Mom is her first book to be translated to English.

Small Island by Andrea Levy

There are some journeys where you can lose yourself. 

Gilbert Joseph, a black Jamaican who had volunteered to serve England as an RAF pilot in the war against Nazi Germany, realized this only when it was too late. He had set sail on a ship that brought with it a group of eager, hardworking Jamaicans to England. Jamaica, at that time, was British colony, and the humble Jamaicans considered it their allegiance to defend their 'mother country' England.

“Then one day you hear Mother calling – she is troubled, she need your help. Leave home, leave familiar, leave love. Shiver, tire, hunger – for no sacrifice is too much to see you at Mother’s needy side.”

Though England was up in arms against the atrocities of the Nazis, its own society was, at that time, steeped in an intense prejudice against people of color. It wasn't long before Gilbert and other earnest Jamaicans realized that, but for the purpose of serving lowly jobs in the war, their colored selves were very unwelcome on this white turf.

"She offers you no comfort after your journey. No smile. No welcome. Yet she looks down at you through lordly eyes and says "Who the bloody hell are you?""

Gilbert's high-flying dream of becoming an RAF pilot was quashed, and he was forced to work as a driver. His poetic lament tugs at the heartstrings, echoing the disillusionment of many others like him: "How come England did not know me?"

The inspiration for this bittersweet novel was sparked by one such journey from Jamaica to England made by the author's father. Told from four different points of view, the author weaves together a telling tale of four individuals and the troubled times that they find themselves in. 

At the other end, in Kingston, Jamaica, Hortense Roberts had enough reasons to hold her head high. She was colored a light shade of golden honey and was a teacher to boot, which automatically relegated her a cut above other soot black Jamaican women. She dreamed of going to England, the perfect abode for an accomplished lady like her, and work there as a teacher.

Now Gilbert was the anti-pole of her dream man - uncouth, unsophisticated, hardly the gentleman, with only a guileless heart as his saving grace. In a union of convenience of sorts, Hortense married Gilbert, and arrived in England. Her pipe dreams about the glory of England came crashing down as soon as she set her eyes on his ramshackle one-room home. This disillusionment made her insufferable; she patronized Gilbert and continually harangued him, but Gilbert was not one to take this lying down. Their spirited exchanges, delivered in authentic Jamaican diction, brought comic relief to the intense story.

Their landlady, the effervescent Queenie, was another narrator. She had the distinction of being the only white person in the neighborhood to rent out her rooms to black people.Though broadminded, Queenie had a diminutive knowledge of the world outside England, and thought, like several other Britons, that Jamaica was in Africa. She was married to an unromantic English bloke, Bernard, who harbored an unconcealed dislike of black people. When Queenie let out her rooms to Gilbert and some other black Jamaicans, Bernard had been missing from home for 5 years, having gone to India to support the English troops during World War 2. In this subplot, the author dwelt a tad excessively on highlighting Queenie's charitable spirit; it got to the point where I thought any more of it would be overkill.

At about three-fourths into the plot, Bernard reappeared, completely unsettling the lives of the other three characters. His late introduction made it harder to relate to his narrative because, by that time, I had already categorized him as an insignificant character in the novel. Since the plot switched among multiple first-person narratives, it took some effort to change gears and adapt to a new character's point of view.

Anyhow, I ploughed through Bernard's narrative, hoping to be rewarded with some enlightening prose of India in the 1940s, but the author had nothing new to say beyond the trite set of clichés' and stereotypes that have to be mentioned in any writing about India - cows on streets, mosquitoes, dirty railway platforms, begging urchins, open latrines, stench, body odor, garlic breath, snakes, snaky head shake. In that brief narrative, Ms. Levy had them all covered, as if she were just referring them off a list of Indian peculiarities that she had especially created for the purpose.

In a surprising development that converged all plot lines, Micheal Roberts - the mischief maker from Hortense's childhood who had teased Hortense as a child and grew up to be a skirt chaser - turned up one day at Queenie's door. The author risked too much of a coincidence here, making the plot that was flowing so organically until that moment appear synthetic and contrived. But despite this, the author had complete command over the four narratives -those of Gilbert, Horetense, Queenie, and Bernard. They worked in perfect unison, smartly propelling the story forward, not once derailing the plot. For the most part, the pacing was good, each individual narrative sharing nothing more, nothing less than what was required of the plot, while the story steadily gravitated towards the climax.

It was through Micheal that the author chose to make a beautiful statement that echoed as the motif of the book. Micheal had once sighted amongst the debris of London a multi-hued hummingbird, the national bird of Jamaica, and in that hummingbird, its red, green, yellow hues flitting against the dull gray of debris, he saw a glimpse of his native country. Like a buoy that secured a drowning man against pull of the waters, this sentiment sustained and comforted the multitudes of soldiers, refugees, and immigrants who have had to leave their homeland to live in foreign shores. As evident from the warmth that enveloped Gilbert after sighting other Jamaicans in the cold, frigid streets of London, and the succor that Bernard felt amidst fellow Englishmen in faraway Calcutta, it was this sense of deja vu, these snatches of familiarity that helped one hang on to the fading memories of their motherland even in hostile, unfriendly shores.

The novel culminates in a twist that appears cinematic at first, but upon reflection, grows on you as an intense indicator of just how much racial prejudice scars the psyche of a society.

Andrea Levy (born 1956) is a British author, born in London to Jamaican parents who sailed to England on the Empire Windrush in 1948. Levy began writing only in her mid-thirties, but she attracted attention immediately with her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House Burnin'. Her fourth novel, Small Island (2004) published by Picador, won the Whitbread Book of the Year award (2004), the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004), and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (2005). It has since been made into a television drama, which was broadcast by the BBC in December 2009. (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Author: Lorrie Moore, bio
Publisher: Random House

A Gate at the Stairs is a kaleidoscope of insightful observations on the monotones of everyday life and human foibles in the face of adversity. Set in a Midwestern town, the novel plays itself out in a chronological manner, interspersed with flashes of flashbacks, as a series of experiences that the protagonist Tassie undergoes in a particular period of time.

Tassie, an unpretentious twenty-year-old, leads a cocooned life, going through the motions of college life and a part time babysitting job, when her life is overturned and she is thrust from her haven into the real, harsh ways of the world. Involving a mysterious boyfriend, a weird employer, and a personal tragedy waiting to happen, this book is a stoic narration about a girl enduring personal turbulence, and maturing in the process.

The book, however, turns out to be more of the author’s sounding board than that of the protagonist. The author seeks to make statements on an assortment of themes like terrorism, racism, adoption, dysfunctional families, love, religion, war, and death using the protagonist as her mouthpiece. But sadly, the beauty of her message doesn’t translate through the voice of Tassie, because the plot doesn’t pull through.

Written in the first person, the author chooses to keep no secrets from her readers, and reveals too much too quickly. In the subplot about Tassie's brother Robert, it becomes apparent early on that a terrible fate awaits him. At least three instances are a dead giveaway -Tassie's brushing off her brother’s apprehensions about joining the military; the brother prematurely revealing the way he wants himself buried; and Tassie's forgetting to reply to his email. The sense of a tragedy looming becomes official in P.258: And here between us passed a look of pale apprehension, some past, some future, the details of which I couldn’t yet know, but each blasting into the room and meeting there, draining the blood from our faces. After this, it is just a wait, for when, or on which page, the brother will be killed off. It certainly robbed the plot of its tension.

The lack of suspense and credibility also plagues the subplot about her boyfriend Reynaldo. It defies logic why he‘s still dawdling in his apartment if “they” (cops?) have marked him a jihadi suspect. Tassie's launching into a tirade against jihad is a bit out-of-character, given that she has been portrayed as a meek, non-confrontational person; evidently, here the protagonist functions as the author’s mouthpiece. That the boyfriend listens to her spiel and proffers explanation is even more unexpected. The exchange of words between them at this point is poorly narrated; it comes through as artificial and unconvincing. There are a host of other unresolved questions in this subplot - the scene about her blood stain in the apartment was left unresolved. Upon careful reading, it becomes apparent that the subplots about the brother and boyfriend have been concocted to draw an implied parallel in the philosophical hallucination scene where Tassie encounters the apparitions of Robert and Reynaldo - the soldier and the terrorist.

The subplot on Sarah’s wretched past exposes another frantic attempt to hold the plot together. The author struggles to depict an extreme account of neglect to convince the readers as to why the agency would revoke the adoption. The book can be so much better if the author does away with this subplot, or at least conjures a credible case of neglect and a more palatable aftermath.

The subplot about the adoption of the black toddler into the white household makes for a delightful read. The conversations of the support group, the cacophony of voices and opinions are realistic, which in itself is not easy to accomplish.  There’s one little grouse though – why is there a need to make Mary-Emma the toddler “spectacularly pretty?”  “Everyone loved a beautiful baby, no matter what,” says the protagonist. It would be interesting to see how the story plays out if she had been an ordinary looking child.

The author has artistically nailed a somber mood throughout the book, reflecting the gravity of its many themes. A sense of solemnity permeates even during its funny or lighter moments. The pace is uneven- too little happening at the beginning, a flood of action towards the end. The writing style is superlative. At times however, the descriptions and the imagery get excessive, and meanders away from the story; be it the random descriptions of the squirrel that lay dead on the road, the university stadium through the seasons, or the flowers that grow in the yard. The luscious sample of food writing is delectable, but it quickly gets tedious. And of some farcical imagery - “I could peer up her nostrils, the weave of tiny hairs like the crisscross of branches seen from the base of a tree”- sometimes the less said the better. Not that the descriptions aren’t interesting; they are remarkably well-written and original, but without the backbone of a solid plot, they read like a pointless exercise in creative writing.

As for the title A Gate at the Stairs, its interpretation can be subjective. Having a restraining gate is like living in a safety bubble, one imagines that one is secure, but life proves otherwise; the experiences of Tassie show that nothing can prepare or shield one from the roller coaster ride of life. “Life was unendurable, and yet everywhere it was endured.” P.432. A gate could be an allegory for a sense of safety, or protection, because Tassie endures and overcomes. There’s no conclusive statement about the significance of the title though; it can mean different things to different readers – with good or bad repercussions for the book. An aimless plot catering to a medley of themes can potentially leave the reader as deluded and clueless as Tassie herself. Much as I admire the author’s lyrical prose and her insights on universal questions, I wish she builds a strong, foolproof plot that holds the book together and embodies the power of her prose. If the author does not infuse her message more carefully into the book, we can foresee her readers and reviewers question - “What’s the whole point?”