Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Souk Shin –  This book is about a Korean Family in which early in the story we learn that the elderly mother, the matriarch of the family, is missing. She was coming to Seoul, the big city, with her husband when their hand grasp was loosened in a crowded train station. This is the premise which the author uses to examine the role  of the mother in this family, at the same times she is able to touch upon universal issues in relationships in every culture. This is particularly poignant where mother comes from poverty and can’t give her children more than the sweat of her brow and the food off of her plate. To give your child what you never had is an understandable dream of a parent who saw so much around her that she couldn’t reach. For some parents it may be an education  or even the ability read, freedom from hunger , a career, travel, knowledge of the world etc. How much should a mother show of  her insecurity to her children and will this change with age when the children hopefully can obtain some of the things the parents could never have. Then there are secrets of the parents that the children never know. Even if the children think they know the secrets and what went on behind the scenes, they may not know the whole story. Did the children really know about Father and the other woman? Would they dare even to think that mother had a secret man friend . Certainly this book makes the reader reflect on whether we really understood our own mothers as well as whether our children really know us. Perhaps in guise of protecting a child, there is less sharing of goals, frustrations and even triumphs. Do grown children do the same thing with parents? Does this lead to less closeness and empathy for each other? Through the eyes of the family members we also appreciate how there can be delayed or postponed expressions of appreciation for each other and how one might regret this as time runs out. A worthy lesson of this book. As beautiful and as poignant as some of the insights of this book might be, it is quite repetitious. It loses much of it’s value as it hammers home the lessons and points it is making. It is one thing to tug at the reader’s heartstrings and try to make universal truths about essence of motherhood. However, to rehash it from several points of view, including a view of bird looking in some family interactions (bird’s eye view?) doesn’t not make a pleasant reading experience in this writer’s opinion. It seemed to me, there should have been some fresh new understanding and insight that was lacking in this book. One of the children of the mother in this story was described as being a successful author. She was frequently at odds with her mother and had much grief when her mother was gone before she could really reconcile. It was enough perhaps to bring about this novel.

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

A father, the patriarch of the family dies. His three sons and a daughter with their families or significant other return home and join  the widow to sit Shiva for one week  after they are told that this is the surprising and uncharacteristic wish of the deceased. (Perhaps he wanted them to get together?) This becomes the setting for the author through the eyes of one of the sons, to explore the overt lives as well as the inner thoughts of all these participants. Sex, love or the lacks of the latter are the main themes. There is certainly plenty of the former. Mr Tropper has the ability to show his protagonist’s every sexual thought in a natural manner which I am sure most men and many women certainly will acknowledge has passed through their minds at one time or the other. He also creates a potpourri of affairs, encounters in the present or rekindled from the past, old flames, new flames, what could have been, what never should have been, fulfilled love, unfulfilled love and a lot more, Each one of these events is very real and I am sure just about every reader knows of some these first hand or knows about them existing somewhere in their family. But all of them in one family? It makes this a far fetched reading experience, albeit quite interesting. The interaction of these family members who on one hand seem to be so different and antagonistic to each other actually turn out to also feel close to each other and deep down quite caring of their family members. As we appreciate the events of their childhood we are also led to consider what role did their parents have in them ending up with this family bond? This stimulates in this writer wondering how our own kids family experiences will influence their relationships later in life when we are gone. It did not escape us that one of the parents (the mother) was some kind of a therapist although a quirky one at that. She had her own theories how to raise children, Probably all therapists, based on their experience treating people and seeing the results of their childhood on their adult problems, have ideas how to  better raise their own children. This reminds me of one of few Yiddish expressions that I know : Es vet gornit helfen!: Nothing will help!!

In my opinion what is missing in this book and what prevents it from being a great novel is that there is no real plot. In the future when the author comes up with an intriguing story line and adds his uncanny ability to capture inner feelings and thoughts, I believe he will bring his writing to a  new award winning level.

A Working Theory of Love by  Scott Hutchins

This first time novelist chose to bring his readers into the world of modern day computers where there is a race to make the first computer that can actually think like a human being. There is actually something called the Turing Test  named after one of the first computer geniuses Alan Turing, who was a British mathematician who broke the German Enigma Code during WW II. Turing  committed suicide after being prosecuted by the British government for being a homosexual. The Turing Test which is a key part of this novel is where a human being and computer are blindly  evaluated  by a human judge as to whether he/she believes they are human. If the responses of the computer are judged to be the human being more than 30% of the time, the computer is deemed to have achieved thinking like a human.

The voice of the book is Neill Bassett Jr., a man in his 30s who is hired to work for a start up company that is buiding such a machine which they hope will win the Turing Test competition. Bassett’s main qualifications to be hired is that his father the late Dr. Neill Bassett kept an extensive dairy of  his personal thoughts for many years and that material is being fed into the computer to give it human experience. Dr. Bassett unfortunately ended his life by an unexpected suicide and one of the dilemmas that scientists building the computer face is whether to tell the computer about this event.

Obviously to  ultimately think like a human, there would have to be input about various human qualities including greed, jealousy and of course love. The people working on this project find materials to add this element to the computer program. This also includes understanding sexuality. The young Bassett who basically narrates this book goes into detail with his own struggles particularly about his short lived marriage, his sexual affairs and  a special relationship with a younger woman in her early 20s. During his work day part of his job is to have conversations with “ his father “ and he eventually tells Dr. Bassett (the computer) that he is his son. He also  invites his mother to his work place  one day  in order to have a conversation with her deceased husband.

It appeared to be the author’s purpose to examine the meaning of love and relationships which is quite a task even for an experienced novelist let alone a first time author. I am not quite sure he achieved some great insights but  he chose a unique premise to try to do so.