Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin

THE PRIZE-WINNING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Told in a brutally honest voice that at times simmers with impotent rage, author Kim Hye-jin taps into both the complexities of mother-daughter dynamics and the systemic issues and obstacles that LGBTQ+ communities face in heteronormative societies.

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?

Exquisitely written and intensely humane, Hye-Jin's meditation on ageing, generational attitudes, and the bond between mothers and daughters sings with insight and beautifully crafted prose.

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