Pachinko
Books | Fiction / Family Life / General
4.4
(565)
Min Jin Lee
* The million-copy bestseller* * National Book Award finalist * * One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2017 * * Selected for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club * 'This is a captivating book... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK OBAMA. Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife. Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story. Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival.
Historical Fiction
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Author
Min Jin Lee
Pages
560
Publisher
Head of Zeus
Published Date
2017-02-23
ISBN
1786691345 9781786691347
Community ReviewsSee all
"This book is pretty long, so naturally there were a few moments where I started to get bored but there were so many more where I couldn't wait to see what was coming next. This book spans across 4 generations, allowing the reader to look deeper into how the characters' past affects their present and ultimately future. There are difficult moments in the book, but the author doesn't waste time to linger on any of them, instead choosing to move forward with the story and showing the effect of the moment which for me was beautiful, and exemplified the often taught concept of "show, don't tell". The moments I sometimes got bored felt like natural ones, as the author would begin to focus on a character that had previously been in the background, so I hadn't grown interested in them yet, for this reason I won't hold it against the book. I also found the ending to somehow feel perfect, possibly my favorite ending that I've ever read though I couldn't explain why. Despite that I wouldn't give it a perfect 10/10, as I wish Sunja's growth had been more evident especially considering how much of her life we were able to see, this leaves my rating at a 9/10, still absolutely wonderful."
"Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a masterful take on a historical fiction novel, and the best of that genre I have ever read. <br/><br/>The story covers 80 years and multiple generations of this Korean family. You read through all of the choices that this family makes and get to see the impact throughout the years covered by the book. It really felt like I was reading a memoir about this family’s genealogy. Lee did an amazing job of providing their family history in a unique way. <br/><br/>Each of the characters in Pachinko have shades of grey to them, which makes them feel real and three-dimensional. No one character can be put in a “good person” or “bad person” bucket (though characters lean one way or the other) all of them fall on a spectrum between. Because of this, it made me want to keep learning about every character that was shown, even the more minor characters. <br/><br/>The historical aspect of this was so well done. Anytime a fictional book set during a real time period drives me to research more about it is a great thing, and something that does not happen often. Lee uses things like the Japanese occupation of Korea, World War II, and the Korean War as great backdrops to help tell her story of Koreans in Japan. I have learned so much from this book and will continue to read about this subject going forward. For a fictional book to accomplish that is extraordinary and shows just what a wonderful job Min Jin Lee did.<br/><br/>I can not recommend this book enough. There are no caveats, this book is a must read for everyone."
C C
Cody Crumley
"Actual rating is 4.5. I thought the story starting progressing too fast towards the end, but other than that wow… what a book. I’ve always been a sucker for generational plots and this one is among the best. <br/><br/>Also, I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to a character’s death more than I did when Noa committed suicide. Out of all of them, his story touched me the most."
"Fascinating cultural and social history about the relationships between Japanese and Koreans over the course of decades leading up to 1989. The title is apt, as it examines fate and destiny and the outcome of the characters’ choices. In fact there is a line Lee uses in one of the final chapters: “It cannot be helped,” which is a key phrase in Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s ‘Farewell to Manzanar’ about the Japanese Internment camps in America. Reminds me of the phrase of resignation and circular illogic I often hear these days and which gets under my skin: “It is what it is.” <br/><br/>In terms of story development, it lacked any one single character’s life or personality in enough depth to feel like I should care about him or her. Sunja almost gets there early on, but then the chapters turn into something like vignettes of her family members with little connection among the chapters (well, until the end, when it ties up. Kind of. Wait for it.) <br/><br/>Maybe it was the story structure, which felt like a car with a bad transmission that can’t quite shift into the next gear. Some chapters end quite abruptly only to be followed by a chapter that jumps to a new character in a new place a few years in the future, leaving me wondering if we’ll ever return to that previous spot and finding that most times, we don’t. <br/><br/>I really had hope for this book. A dear friend likened it to ‘The Poisonwood Bible,’ one of my most cherished books, but it was not that at all for me."
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