From the Bookshelf of EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club…

Pachinko

Min Jin Lee

Start date: September 1, 2024

Finish date: September 30, 2024

Discussion: MODERN / POPULAR READS

Why we're reading this: September 2024 - Bookshelf Catch-Up
Group pick for the Modern Classic/Popular read - Nov. '18…more
[close] September 2024 - Bookshelf Catch-Up
Group pick for the Modern Classic/Popular read - Nov. '18

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MODERN / POPULAR READS

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What Members Thought

Nov 23, 2018 Jen rated it liked it

I’ve read a bunch of reviews of this book that indicated a love of the first part and less love for the second part. And I totally agree. The storyline that follows the women was grinding and difficult but inspiring and full of love of family. The second part that focuses on the men of the story just didn’t do that much for me.
I learned a ton about the relationship between Japan and Korea and particularly Koreans in Japan which I had no idea about. It prompted me to do some research on my own w ...more

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Jun 04, 2019 Laurel Bradshaw rated it really liked it

Shelves: 20th-century, audiobook, daytimers-book-club, color-rating-blue, family-saga, japan, chunky-450, korea

This is a book that spans multiple generations, though tying them all together is the remarkable woman Sunja, forced to leave her home in Korea and build a new life in Japan amid poverty, and blatant discrimination. I admired her dedication to her family, her country, and her principles. I love stories that bring other cultures to life, and the plight of Koreans living in Japan was unfamiliar to me. I loved the first half of the book, and then the themes began to feel repetitive and depressing. This is a book that spans multiple generations, though tying them all together is the remarkable woman Sunja, forced to leave her home in Korea and build a new life in Japan amid poverty, and blatant discrimination. I admired her dedication to her family, her country, and her principles. I love stories that bring other cultures to life, and the plight of Koreans living in Japan was unfamiliar to me. I loved the first half of the book, and then the themes began to feel repetitive and depressing. Her son Noah was a strong secondary character, but after he learned who his father was, I felt the story took a twist that didn't quite ring true to how the character had been portrayed up to that point. And....................................................

spoiler alert........................................................

after his death I wasn't much interested in the rest of the story. The third generation could have been left out. I just couldn't get invested in any more characters only to have the author break my heart again. It was too much at that point. So four stars. My book club liked it over all.

Book description: 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. ...more

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