Pachinko

I struggled to rate this after finishing the book. While I appreciate the huge scope of the narrative, encompassing multiple generations over a tumultuous time period, I was left feeling unsatisfied at the end. Perhaps it had to do with pacing on the second half, as I felt less connected to the multiple characters that get introduced as time went on. The characters also did not have as much emotional depth or introspection, something I got more of when reading Real Americans. I did appreciate the metaphor of pachinko, where life is a sort of organized chaos – historical events over which none of us individually have control that alter the course of our lives, and all we can do is make the best decision that we can based on our interpretation of the situation at the time (which may not have been the best move in hindsight).

Synopsis

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son’s powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.