Pachinko

"First part was amazing! After that it was meh for me."

"I was a little unsure what rating to give this. If it were two books, I'd give the first half five stars and the second half three. So I guess that puts me in the middle with four stars. I loved the first sections that dealt primarily with Sunja and her experiences growing up in Korea, and then moving to Japan as a young wife, and all that her life entailed in both situations. It was a compelling story and I really felt that I was getting a glimpse of what life would be like for women living in Korea in the early parts of the 20th century. <br/><br/>However, the later sections of the book that followed Sunja's children and grandchildren seemed to suddenly jump into hyperspeed. We went from several chapters moving over the course of a few weeks to suddenly passing several years between chapters. There was little chance to really get to know the characters, especially those circling around the main characters. One character kept completely confusing me as the name primarily used for him changed as he had relationships with different members of each generation and, therefore, from one chapter to the next. I'd have to flip backwards a few pages to remind myself of just who this guy was that I was clearly supposed to feel I knew pretty well. (He was a potentially interesting character but unfortunately the development of his story, particularly once he got married, just seemed to get dropped in favor of the main family's stories. He became very peripheral again very suddenly.)<br/><br/>I did very much appreciate the perspective it gave on what it may have been like for Koreans living in occupied Korea and then in Japan through the 20th century. That's not a part of history I really know anything about so, even though I only know it now through one author's fictional take on it which is always a bit tricky, I at least have some historical grounding in it at this point. By extension, many of the feelings and experiences expressed by the main (Korean) characters are probably similar to anyone living in an occupied territory and/or living as "stateless" people, disallowed citizenship in any country. The author creates a great sense of time and place--little details such as the changing clothes worn by women, and in Sunja's case, her own understanding of herself as others would see her in those clothes--added so much richness to the story. However, as a novel following a family, I struggled with the speed of the last section. I would've preferred, I think, for her to end the novel sooner or just not have tried to cover quite so much time. I think she was anxious to show that while some things change, so many others stay the same through generations; yet the speed of the last 30 years or so covered by the book left me feeling far more outside of the story than I had in the first 30 or so years."