Your Neighbour's Table

About

A neighborhood of young mothers in Seoul navigates the invisible labor of parenthood — the school runs, the social performances, the exhausting pretense that everything is fine. When one family's carefully maintained facade cracks, the ripple effects expose the unspoken hierarchies and mutual surveillance that hold the community together. Gu Byeong-mo dissects modern Korean motherhood with the same sharp eye she brought to The Old Woman with the Knife. The novel is incisive about the ways women police each other under the guise of solidarity, and compassionate about the impossible standards that create the pressure in the first place. The domestic setting makes the political observations feel personal. A novel about the table every mother is expected to set — and what happens when someone finally flips it.