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Author:
• Friday, February 24th, 2017

Shin Kyung-Sook was born in 1963 in a village near Jeongeup, north Jeolla Province, in southern South Korea, from humble farmer parents who lacked the financial means to send her to high school. She was the fourth child and eldest daughter of six. At the age of sixteen Shin joined her elder brother in Seoul where she worked at an electronics plant while at the same time attending evening classes.

After graduating as a creative writing major from the Seoul Institute Of Arts, Shin published her first novella “Winter’s Fable” which earned her the 1985 Literary Joongang Newcomer’s Prize.

Shin’s work consists of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She has received several literary prizes and awards and is the most acclaimed writer in South Korea. Please Look After Mother has been translated into several languages and won the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize. It was originally published in Korean in 2008 and in English in 2011.

Presently Shin divides her timetable between Seoul and New York City, where she teaches as a visiting scholar at Colombia University.

Please Look After Mother starts with the one week missing, sixty-nine-year-old illiterate, hard-working peasant, Park So-nyo, who was with her husband on their way to visit their children in Seoul. She is separated from her husband, who is walking fast, ahead of her as usual, in Seoul’s crowded central railway station. The distracted husband boards the congested train in a hurry while his wife is left behind on the platform.

Park So-nyo’s husband and her four adult children, two sons and two daughters, undertake a thorough search to try to find her. The businessman, Hyong-chol, is the eldest son and the successful novelist, Chi-hon, is the eldest daughter.

Park So-nyo’s disappearance leads to a strange mixed feeling in her family, realising that they didn’t really know her well and took her for granted all these years without showing her any gratitude and without ever devoting time to appreciate the love and sacrifice of this kind, affable and generous woman.

Please Look After Mother, Shin’s sixth novel and her first to be translated into other languages, is a short, powerful and heavily emotional book. It is divided into four chapters plus an epilogue. The first chapter concerns the daughter, Chi-hon and the third chapter belongs to Park So-nyo’s husband. The narration in these two chapters is in the uncommon second-person style which lends the novel a note of personal intimacy as well as a general accusatory tone.

In the second chapter, Hyong-chol, Park So-nyo’s favourite child is the focal point. And by a twist from the author, in the fourth chapter the mother reappears as a ghost – suggesting that she has already passed away – to narrate her side of the story which is the most evocative and lyrical part of the novel.

In the poignant, melodramatic, short epilogue, Shin leads the story through a spiritual path by taking the maternal love and devotion to a higher level, turning it into self-martyrdom worthy of sanctity. The author goes to the extent of comparing Park So-nyo to the virgin Mary in Michael Angelo’s “Pietà” and the novel ends with Chi-hon praying and pleading to the virgin Mary to look after her mother.

Each chapter conveys the thoughts, the feelings, the guilt and remorse of each one of the characters. The different narrations as they unravel gradually, constitute the multifaceted story that forms the full image of the matriarch’s character and illustrates the veracity and inner self of each member of the family.

The reader learns that Park So-nyo is a kind-hearted, tough, resilient and determined, solitary woman who is averse to pity and therefore suffers silently from brain cancer, while her family is too busy ignoring the symptoms of her debilitating, dangerous disease. And although poor and in fragile health, she continues to devote herself to helping the less fortunate than her. She gives assistance and comfort to the destitute Un’gyu, his sick wife and to his newly born baby. She is also a donor and a helper in the local orphanage as well as a devoted, self sacrificing mother and wife.

In Please Look After My Mother, the author tackles an important subject by placing in juxtaposition rural and urban life and their effects on societies by creating an unbalance with the increasing social shift from one to the other : a common preoccupation world-wide, not only in South Korea. Young people from the countryside migrating to the big cities, whether they seek education or work in the hope of a better life. They end up settling in the big city leaving their parents behind and nobody to look after the parents or to take over the agricultural land.

In one of her interviews Shin says about her novel: “We’ve taken it for granted that our mothers are always here beside us and devoted to us. We think they are born to be mothers. But they were once girls and women as we are now. I want to show it through this book. My mother is the energy behind my writings.”

How far back can we remember a human being? And how far does the memory of a mother last? Please Look After Mother is a moving, gloomy story, a hymn and a tribute to maternal love and a contemplation on motherhood. A good insight into Korean culture, values, food, festivals and political changes.

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Author:
• Friday, May 23rd, 2014

Peter Mayle was born in Brighton, England in 1939, the youngest of three children. He was educated at Brighton College, England, then at Harrison College Barbados, to where his father had been transferred as a Foreign Office employee.

Mayle left school at the age of sixteen and returned to England. In 1957 he was a trainee at Shell Oil in London before working as a creative director for BBDO, the world-wide advertising agency network based in New York City. In 1975 Mayle left his job to dedicate his time to writing books and in 1986 decided to move to the south of France.

A Year In Provence received the Best Travel Book Of The Year award in 1989 and Author Of The Year prize in 1992. Mayle was made a “chevalier de la légion d’honneur” by the French government in 2002 for his cultural contribution. He lives with his third wife and their two dogs in Lourmarin (Luberon) in France.

Peter Mayle has written several books that have been translated into a number of languages as well as articles for periodicals. A Year In Provence became a BBC TV mini-series in 1993 and A Good Year was made into a film directed by Ridley Scott and released in 2006.

The Marseille Caper is the second novel of a trilogy: The Vintage Caper in 2009, The Marseille Caper in 2012 and The Corsican Caper in 2014.

A tender for building on the last remaining seafront plot in sunny Marseille called “Anse Des Pêcheurs”, is the subject of a three-way dispute between Francis Reboul, the shady French billionaire who is hiding behind his American front-man, Sam Levitt, the sleuth in the Caper trilogy, William Wapping, a corrupt and bankrupt English Lord and former bookmaker cum thug, and Eiffel, a Paris based company represented by madame Caroline Dumas.

Elena Morales, the alluring, insurance agent from Los Angeles and Sam Levitt’s companion, is also invited by Francis Reboul to join Levitt as his guest in Marseille.

Sam Levitt presents himself to the members of the committee as an architect from an American company interested in the building project. William Wapping, who has been bribing his way through everything he wanted, will try bribery to win the “Anse Des Pêcheurs” project but to no avail. That is when he decides to play dirty in order to reach his target. When he discovers that intimidation brings no result he goes further by having his thugs knock Philippe, the journalist friend of Sam Levitt, off his scooter and as a last resort they kidnap Elena Morales.

Apart from the confrontation between the contenders and all the thrills involving the two finalists, the author takes the reader through the charming old narrow streets of old town Marseille and its old port, not forgetting the history of the whole of the south of France, recounted by Levitt which made Elena call him “a walking guide book”.

The author also describes good and unpretentious bistros serving delectable food as well as gastronomic restaurants with sophisticated delightful dishes and good wine, not to mention the constant flowing champagne and various pastries and bakery items.

The author describes French epicurism in detail, the slow pace of life in the idyllic sunny Mediterranean south of France and the “joie de vivre” encountered in this part of the world where food is taken very seriously.

An easy, enjoyable and entertaining, light-hearted read with a simple plot and a happy ending, written with a great deal of fondness by a south of France lover and a “bon vivant”. The book portrays the indulgence in a good life used to its fullest, a sort of an escapism from the everyday hectic routine elsewhere in the world.