Two Books

Concerning My Daughter is a book I found out via a recent NYT review. 

The author, Kim Hye-jin, is a Korean author already celebrated for a previous work.  This one is short (160 or so pages, small sized book) though at times I thought it really could have been somewhat shorter.  The core message probably could have been made in a hundred or so pages. 

Overall, I am glad I read it, though it deals with unpleasant topics, including a detailed look at taking care of a someone with dementia, and prejudice. The book is told through the voice of someone in her sixties (she had her daughter at 31 and the daughter is "thirty something" now) in a precarious position, trying to survive in the home her husband (died a few years earlier) left her.  For whatever reason, she only has one child.

Her precarious position makes it understandable why she is so upset that her daughter has not chosen a more traditional life.  This includes being a lesbian, which is offensive to the narrator, but also just plain scares her.  Fear is suggested as a major cause of her prejudice.  After all, the woman her daughter fell in love with (Lane) is otherwise a very sympathetic character, the sort of caring person that the mother would naturally support.

The mother deep down has some of her daughter's sense of justice.  She is upset that her bosses wants her to lessen the standard of care for Jen, her elderly (must be around 80-85) patient, who once was a celebrated world traveling diplomat type.  She does not want to be told to just go along, which she tries to tell her own daughter, who is protesting mistreatment of lecturers at her university.  She risks her own job to help Jen.

The complex nature of the character helps make us sympathetic, even though she has prejudices.  This includes her own realization deep down that her prejudices are problematic.  It is like she tries to convince herself that she is just thinking of her daughter's own interests.  

Again, Lane, who is a caring type that repeatedly helps her, makes this even more complicated.  They are thrown together since the daughter (we see the other characters and their actions through the mother's eyes) needs to move back in with her mother for financial reasons. Lane moves in as well.  Lane's nickname for the daughter "Green" is the only name we are given for her.  Interestingly, the mother also generally is nameless.

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I read (I'm pretty sure) The Eichmann Trial by Deborah E. Lipstadt, who also was the subject of the fact based film involving her British libel suit (a Holocaust denier used the less free speech protecting laws there to sue, but she did win in the end).  She was recently appointed by President Biden in a role of overseeing antisemitism, her confirmation delayed in large part because Sen. Ron Johnson was upset she called him a fascist. 

Lipstadt dealt with Hannah Arendt's own somewhat infamous book on the trial.   Anne C. Heller (who recently died; she also wrote a much longer bio of Ayn Rand) wrote a short bio (Hannah Arendt; A Life in Dark Times) that I found by chance in the library.  I wanted to find something to hold me over until new books came in.  

I found the book a crisp (144 pg) account that covered the basics and gave a taste of her thought. I plan to include it as an entry on the Book Review website, but as always, it depends of the person who runs it posts it.