Fabulous reads – Tragic story of a hopeless situation
Book review - Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee, Jonathan Ball Publishers, ISBN: 9781786691361
Pachinko is a 2017 novel by Korean American author, Min Jin Lee, and is an epic, historical story about characters from Korea who eventually migrate to Japan.
It is also a vivid, multigenerational saga about life for Koreans in Japan where resilience and emotional conflict dominates.
The word, pachinko, is a Japanese form of pinball.
Pinball is big business in Japan and pachinko, the multibillion-dollar industry, is dominated by Korean Japanese, an immigrant community that has been unwelcome and ill-treated for generations.
But the book, Pachinko is about much more than the game.
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It’s the story of a family’s struggle to fit into a society that treats them with contempt.
It begins the early 20th century when Korea is already under Japanese rule.
A young girl named Sunja is growing up in a small fishing village on a tiny Korean Island. She falls in love with a good looking, older man from the mainland.
When she becomes pregnant he tells her he is already married.
Sunja is saved from disgrace by a Christian minister staying at her family’s boarding house who offers to marry her and take her to Japan where she has no clue what awaits her.
Shame and guilt are the themes with every character continually forced by their position as second-class citizens to make painful sacrifices, and, consequently, to consider the nature of those sacrifices.
Sunja never fully comes to terms with falling pregnant by a married man, nor can she overcome her emotional and material debt to Isak, the man who saves her (his act of sacrifice for her and her family is not enough to provide her with any sense of salvation).
Although the book received excellent reviews, I did not enjoy it, probably not in the mood for this intense drama.
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