Concerning My Daughter
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Prize-winning International Bestseller
When a mother allows her thirty-something daughter to move into her apartment, she wants for her what many mothers might say they want for their child: a steady income, and, even better, a good husband with a good job with whom to start a family.
But when Green turns up with her girlfriend Lane in tow, her mother is unprepared and unwilling to welcome Lane into her home. In fact, she can barely bring herself to be civil. Having centred her life on her husband and child, her daughter’s definition of family is not one she can accept. Her daughter’s involvement in a case of unfair dismissal involving gay colleagues from the university where she works is similarly strange to her.
And yet when the care home where she works insists that she lower her standard of care for an elderly dementia patient who has no family, who travelled the world as a successful diplomat, who chose not to have children, Green’s mother cannot accept it. Why should not having chosen a traditional life mean that your life is worth nothing at all?
In Concerning My Daughter, translated from Korean by Jamie Chang, Kim Hye-jin lays bare our most universal fears on ageing, death and isolation to offer, finally, a paean to love in all its forms.
'An admirably nuanced portrait of prejudice . . . one that boldly takes on the daunting task of humanizing someone whose prejudice has made her cruel.' - The New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kim excavates the complexities of a mother and daughter's relationship in her excellent debut. The unnamed narrator, a widow who works at a nursing home in South Korea, expresses a strong affinity for an elderly dementia patient named Jen. In contrast, the narrator feels only anger and resentment toward her own daughter, Green, who has recently moved back in with her, along with Green's apparent lover, Lane, despite never asking permission to bring him along. Underlying the narrator's anxiety is a sense of invisibility or smallness, which comes through in her stream-of-consciousness inner monologue as she deals with the pain caused by missteps and miscommunications between her and Green, who rejects her hope for her to have a husband and children. "Ma, Lane is my family," Green says. Later, while working with Jen, her mother thinks, "What's the use of family? We all end up the same way." Kim skillfully depicts the vulnerability and fear underlying her protagonist's anxiety and anger, laying bare the ways in which family dynamics are fluid and full of paradoxes. As the narrator reflects, "The child who sprang from my own flesh and blood is perhaps the creature I'm most distant from." Kim's compassionate portrayal of the narrator's contradictions and ever-changing feelings makes her project captivating and moving. Readers will be grateful to discover this new author.
