write a 700-750 word book review of Shin Kyong-sook’s novel, Please Look After Mom, in concise English prose. In this review you will describe and analyze
the novel, discussing themes and issues as presented in the book.
“The difference between a book report and a critical book review is that the latter evinces thought and analysis, not just narrative descriiption of the reading.
My criteria in grading your reviews will be a sense that you have thoroughly read and thought about the books and can express your thoughts in clear English
prose. You may (and should) use quotations from the books to document and enhance your review, but not to substitute for your own thought and analysis.
Remember, in this and in any other paper, your must always indicate the source of your quote — author’s name, book title, and page number. If you use
another’s words, you must put them in quotation marks and cite your source. Anything else is plagiarism. In this case, since we are dealing with the same
two books, if you quote, simply note the name of the book and the page number in parentheses after the quote. I neither expect, nor want, you to do
additional outside research about these books. I am interested in your own thoughts and analyses as based on and integrated with what you have learned
and are learning in this class.
Possible themes and approaches vary. Many of the issues and questions about modern Korean history that we have discussed in class can give you food for
thought on how to approach this work. After providing a brief summary of the book to introduce your reader to the work, some questions you may wish to
explore are what this book tells us about South Korea? What does the narrative tell us about the modernization of Korean society? What does the book tell us
about Korean society – about women, about hierarchy? What are the social values of the day? What are the areas of conflict between Korean tradition and/or
Western beliefs? What are the dreams, wishes, hopes, aspirations of the characters and what do these tell us about their world? What is the author’s goal in
writing this book? Does she succeed or fail in achieving her goal?
The above are just some ideas to get you started thinking about the book. You may approach it in your own way, but do present and develop a coherent and
unifying theme, which you discuss throughout the review. ”