The narrator of the story, a widow working in a nursing home in South Korea, is forced to share her small house with her thirty-year-old daughter and her girlfriend, a relationship she does not accept. The mother, unprepared to accept them, finds herself suspended between the ideal of the traditional family—to which she dedicated her entire existence—and the ideals for which her daughter fights.
Soon, the mother's comments and prejudices bring to light old and new conflicts among the three women, making their coexistence increasingly difficult. A situation that worsens alongside the narrator's precarious work situation, as she begins to question the inhumane treatment that elderly women receive at the nursing home where she works.
Kim Hye-Jin writes a profoundly moving novel about the tension that arises when relatives are forced to live together. Through the eyes of a mother trying to understand her experiences, she explores the relationships between parents, homophobia, alienation, loneliness, and the meaning of care; at the same time, she offers the reader the power of love in all its forms and shades as an antidote.
