The Listening

The narrator of the story, a widow working in a care home in South Korea, is forced to share her small home with her thirty-year-old daughter and her daughter’s girlfriend, a relationship she does not accept. Unprepared to accept them, the mother finds herself torn between the model of the traditional family – to which she has devoted her entire existence – and the ideals for which her daughter is fighting. Soon, the mother’s comments and prejudices bring to light old and new conflicts between the three women, making their coexistence increasingly difficult. A situation that worsens alongside the narrator’s precarious employment situation, as she begins to question the inhumane treatment meted out to the elderly women in the care home where she works. Kim Hye-Jin writes a deeply moving novel about the tension that arises when relatives are forced to live together. Through the eyes of a mother trying to make sense of her experience, she explores the relationship between parents, homophobia, alienation, loneliness and the very meaning of care; at the same time offering the reader, as an antidote, the power of love in all its forms and shades.

The contemplative, masterfully structured story of a woman who, following a sudden tragedy, finds herself in the crosshairs of an entire society and the unexpected paths she must follow in search of redemption. Im Hee-soo is a successful therapist who regularly appears on a popular television programme. When she makes a negative comment about a public figure who later commits suicide, she is fired from her job, loses her friends, and her marriage begins to fall apart. One day, she unexpectedly meets Se-yi, a nine-year-old girl trying to feed a stray cat. The street cats, which seem to be everywhere, enjoy the care of yet another woman and the wrath of all the other residents. Like Im Hae-soo and Se-yi, they too endure various attacks and their wounds heal slowly. Im Hae-soo, who had never had any animal-loving sensibilities, nor a soft spot for children, now finds herself connected to something greater and deeper than herself. A captivating meditation on the theme of personal and professional ethics. ―Publisher’s Weekly