Pachinko in Reading the World

May 23, 2021 Phyllis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: category-fiction, genre-history-geography, genre-historicalfiction, topic-war-insurrection-revolution, award-natlbkfictionfinalist, award-tobreading, 2021reading, topic-family-multigenerational, topic-migration-displacement, location-japan

This beautiful novel spans the years from 1910 through 1989, telling the story of a Korean woman named Sunja and the generations of her family -- her parents, children, and grandchildren. Sunja is the only surviving child of her parents Hoonie and Yangjin, growing up in the southern fishing village of Yeongdo in Busan, Korea where her family runs a boarding house. Her life takes her to Osaka, Japan, where much of the story is set.

The author's well-researched and elegantly written prose traces t ...more

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May 08, 2023 Joana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Really loved the book!
Such a moving story!

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Jul 10, 2019 GailW rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star, gen-hist-fic, aut-new2me, ch19, aut-lecture, aut-diversity, reg-asia

This story is beautiful.

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Oct 29, 2018 Priyanka rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: drama, historical, read-in-2018

There was more to being something than just blood.

I started this about a month ago and took my sweet time reading it, not so much because it's a long novel sprawling over five-hundred pages and is not engaging enough (it very much is), but because I wanted to savour it slowly and deliberately for the things and happenings in the story to fully sink in and for me to properly reflect on them along the way. This also sort of helped 'simulate' the broad scope of the narrative, which unfolds ove

There was more to being something than just blood.

I started this about a month ago and took my sweet time reading it, not so much because it's a long novel sprawling over five-hundred pages and is not engaging enough (it very much is), but because I wanted to savour it slowly and deliberately for the things and happenings in the story to fully sink in and for me to properly reflect on them along the way. This also sort of helped 'simulate' the broad scope of the narrative, which unfolds over a long course of time – a sizeable chunk of the twentieth century – and spans across five generations of a family and their acquaintances and associates.

As I look back on my experience of reading the book and put my thoughts into words, I can only begin to describe it as an emotional roller-coaster. It's intensely poignant, and I had tears running down my cheeks on a number of occasions. Certain parts and plot points were, for me, reminiscent of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, to varying degrees.

My biggest takeaway from the book, though, is its exploration of expatriate life, identity, the notion of family, and what it means to belong to a community or nation. It has taught me quite a bit about the turbulent dynamics between Koreans and Japanese, and the plight of Korean immigrants and the successive generations in Japan in the twentieth century – a slice of history which is not often addressed or explored in mainstream media and which, I have to ashamedly admit, I was ignorant of until this book came along. And it saddened me to think how social discrimination, in all forms and ways, has been a constant through human history across nations and cultures, which is not exactly a newfound realization, but reading this book really drove that home once again. I appreciate how it never feels like history lessons are being dumped on the reader. Everything is skilfully incorporated into the narrative and the characters' experiences, struggles, and musings, so it makes for a good 'edutaining' novel.

Insofar as the shortcomings of the book are concerned, I feel like the story kinda falters during the last quarter or so. I generally like narratives with a huge cast taking 'detours' to explore secondary/supporting characters outside of the main clique, but the way a couple of characters were introduced and dealt with at the tail end of the book felt like the author was writing about them just for the sake of it. I understand the intention behind writing about these characters, but I was left underwhelmed by the way it was executed and wasn't quite sold on their stories. Also, I'm not sure if this counts as nitpicking, but I can't help being on the fence about how the author has recurrently resorted to cancer as a cause of character death and/or to evoke sympathy in at least three instances. It felt like a lazy and convenient cop-out to me, especially since a handful of other characters are already established to be suffering from some or the other illness and because surely there must be other, more inventive means to the same end of making the reader conscious of a character's mortality or evoking sympathy. Thankfully the story picks itself up again at the end and concludes on a satisfactory note. I had to put the book down and cry after reading the last few pages because it was so bittersweet but also beautiful.

Finally, I liked how the running motif of pachinko is cleverly integrated in the story – both at the literal level with the pachinko industry serving as a key backdrop to significant parts of the second half of the narrative, and at the figurative level through the recurring suggestion that life is much like a game of pachinko. The comparatively weak writing in the last quarter of the book keeps it from reaching perfection, but overall it's a good and emotionally powerful story and certainly one of the most impactful among the books I have read this year so far.

[3.9 stars] ...more

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Aug 29, 2022 Shahar rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio

3.7 - Its the type of books that make me wonder what is my taste in reading.
from one hand its well written and beautiful in parts . its spuns over generations and set on a background that i didnt know much about but it left me standing outside. Looking at it with a distance. Could be the spun of time and the jump between charcters ( though i like that ) , but felt i was shown something without a bite.

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Oct 07, 2024 Larissa Reads the World rated it really liked it

Shelves: blog-reviews

One of the most surprising things I’ve learned this year of reading more Asian books is the impact that Japan’s imperialism had in East Asia. Pachinko is the third book I read in which this is a central element.

In Min Jin Lee’s best-seller book, we follow 4 generations of Koreans in their search for belonging. It all starts in the 1910s in a small village near Busan, in what is now South Korea. Yangjin is a hard-working woman who makes a living managing a lodging house with her husband Hoonie an ...more

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