First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

Two years after losing her daughter in a tragic accident, Hon finally returns to her home in the countryside to take care of her father. At first, her father appears withdrawn and fragile, an aging man, awkward but kind around his own daughter. Then, after stumbling upon a chest of letters, Hon discovers the truth of her father’s past and reconstructs her family history.

Consumed with her own grief, Hon has been blind to her father’s vulnerability and her family’s fragility. Unraveling secret after secret, Hon grows closer to her father, who proves to be more complex than she ever gave him credit for. After living through one of the most tumultuous times in Korean history, her father’s life spiraled after the civil war. Now, after years of emotional isolation, Hon learns the whole truth, from her father’s affair and involvement in a religious sect, to the dynamic lives of her siblings, to her family’s financial hardships.

What Hon uncovers about her father builds toward her understanding of the great scope of his sacrifice and heroism, and of his generation. More than just the portrait of a single man, I Wen to See My Father opens a window on humankind, family, loss, and war.

Happy Friday everyone! Well, Happy Saturday to be more exact. And just like that, we are in the weekend, another work week is in the books. It has been an emotional rollercoaster of a week but still, I am glad I was able to make it through. I hope that everyone is diving into the weekend with not much to worry about. I hope that you are all ending the work week on a high note. At least we have two days to recuperate and spend time pursuing the things that we love and are passionate about. Which reminds me: yesterday was the last Friday of the second month of the year. March is just a couple of days away. I hope that the year has been kind to everyone. I hope everyone is doing great, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Before I dive into the weekend, let me cap another week of blogging with a new First Impression Friday update. This weekly has become an essential part of my weekly blogging routine. A blogging week will not be complete without a fresh update even though my updates are late, just like the case for this week’s. These First Impression Friday updates are breathers in a way. They provide me a space to slow down and reassess where I am with the book I am reading. Some of my weekly updates have also provided me a backbone for my subsequent reviews of the books I featured. So, here I am again with a new update. To close the week, I am featuring Kyung-Sook Shin’s I Went To See My Father.

I Went To See My Father is a continuation of my current reading journey wherein I have dedicated the first two months of the year to reading books published during the current decade. This journey has brought me to various parts of the world. I have been to the United States, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Vietnam, and Malaysia. This journey has recently brought me to South Korea, first, with Hwang Bo-Reum’s Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop and now, my third novel by Kyung-Sook Shin whom I first encountered in 2018 with her award-winning novel, Please Look After Mom. Somehow, my current read reminds me of Please Look After Mom, but now the perspective shifts to the father. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think my current read is a sequel to the first Shin novel I read but I guess we can I Went to See My Father as a companion book to Please Look After Mom.

Anyway, to the story. The I in the title is Honnie, a woman in her sixties who visited her father for the first time in a long while. It was an abrupt decision after her mother went to Seoul for a hospital visit, leaving her aging father alone in her childhood home. As the story moved forward, one can sense that it was no last-minute decision. Two years prior, Hon – or Honnie as her father would fondly call her – lost her daughter to a tragic accident. In the novel’s opening chapters, we learn more about Hon’s father. He was the second oldest son of the oldest son born to a Korean family in the countryside. When he was fourteen, his older brother passed away due to an epidemic. It wasn’t long before his parents also perished, one after the other. This left him as the head of the family at the tender age of fourteen.

He has an older sister but the responsibility of looking after his siblings – such as bringing them food and providing them shelter – fell on his shoulders. Those with weak constitutions would have given up at the first instance. Hon’s father, however, does not belong to this group. Using their lone ox, he earned money by tilling the lands of their neighbors. But it was not only looking after his family that he had to worry about. Over the horizon, the North Korean army and the Korean War are slowly inching toward their locality. All of these details created a portrait of a strong and self-sufficient individual.

Hon’s visit to her father, however, prompted her to reevaluate her vision of her father. Is he really the strong person she has known all her life? Hon was a writer by profession and in her childhood home, she got to revisit some of her memories. In one reflective moment, she talked about the graduation pictures of his children that her father hung on the walls. The graduation picture of the eldest son was, at one point, prominently displayed, underlining how proud their father is for being able to make one of his children graduate. One graduation picture, however, was missing: Hon’s picture. Hon was the fourth born in their family and was the first girl, a source of pride for their father.

But Hon comes across as a cipher. I guess the reservation comes from a place of grief. During her stay with her father, she sees a different man. The man she saw was a shell of the father she used to know. His behavioral changes were a shock to the core. At times, she found her father tearing up. He also had bouts of insomnia and even periods when his memory evades him. Overall, I can sense a heartwarming tale, like the first Shin novel I read. It raises the question for children. Do we really know our parents? Do we really know the sacrifices they made for us? It is ironic how we only begin to understand this when we start seeing creases etched on their faces when the vitality they once displayed is no longer there.

I surmise that this is going to be a heavy read but I also can’t wait to see how this pans out. How about you fellow reader? What book or books are you going to take with you this weekend? I hope you get to enjoy whatever you are reading right now. Happy weekend!