From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

Pachinko

Min Jin Lee

Start date: August 15, 2018

Finish date: September 1, 2018

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Jane

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What Members Thought

Apr 23, 2018 Jane rated it it was amazing

Pachinko is a wonderful story of four generations of a Korean family who emigrates to Japan before World War II. The lives of family members are affected by love, poverty, war, education, religion, marriage, class and anti-Korean sentiment in Japan during the years up to 1990’s, when the narrative closes…but doesn’t actually “end."

I loved the simplicity of the narration, and the complexity with which the characters came to life for me. Nearly every character is flawed in some way---by passion,
Pachinko is a wonderful story of four generations of a Korean family who emigrates to Japan before World War II. The lives of family members are affected by love, poverty, war, education, religion, marriage, class and anti-Korean sentiment in Japan during the years up to 1990’s, when the narrative closes…but doesn’t actually “end."

I loved the simplicity of the narration, and the complexity with which the characters came to life for me. Nearly every character is flawed in some way---by passion, greed, the desire to please a parent or spouse, anger, nationalism, or the longing for a home.

It’s an apt book to read now as we read accounts of the detention of immigrants in our own country, each of whom has a unique web of connections and longings, aspirations, suffering, dreams and suffering which are part of the fabric of their individual stories.
Min Jin Lee wrote this story over thirty years and in the “Acknowledgements” pages and during this time , she moved with her husband to Japan where she met many Korean Japanese and realized that she’d gotten the story wrong. “Many of them were historical victims…but none were as simple as that. I was so humbled by the breadth and complexity of the people I met, that I put aside my old draft, begun in 1989, and started to write the book again in 2008, and continued to write and revise it until its publication in 2017.”

I felt that these were characters who’d been lived with…not fabricated. These are suffering, good hearted, conflicted, jealous, heartbroken, vengeful people. Over the span of the book I was captured by their lives and stories as they unfold over the years between 1910 and 1989. The writing seems spare in certain ways, but the sentences are thick with meaning, history and emotion. It caught me gradually, over time as I read. The final effect was and is stunning.
Books and home are important throughout, so the epigraph from Charles Dickens is perfect: Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one: stronger than magician ever spoke or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration. Think of those words as you read this book…or today’s news.

Some quotations from the book...don't read if this kind of thing SPOILS A BOOK for you!!!

Friendship is another important theme. In one scene, Mozasu, who has been teased by bullies at the Japanese school he attends, watches another new child, also Korean, being bullied. Mozasu tells the new boy he will sit with him during recess “so he doesn’t have to watch Haruki try to to talk to these assholes one more time. ‘Truly?’ Haruki said, smiling. Mozasu nodded, and even when they were men, neither one ever forgot how they became best friends.

And here’s the section that helped me understand the title: Mozasu couldn’t imagine being so quiet all the time; he would miss the bustle of the pachinko parlor. He loved all the moving pieces of his large noisy business. His Presbyterian minister father had believed in a divine design, and Mozasu believed that life was like this game where the player could adjust the dials yet also expect the uncertainty of factors he couldn’t control. He understood why his customers wanted to play something that looked fixed but which also left room for randomness and hope.” 297

Phoebe loved being with Solomon’s family. It was much smaller than her own, but everyone seemed closer, as if each member were organically attached to one seamless body, whereas her enormous extended family felt like cheerfully mismatched Lego bricks in a large bucket. 455

Later when Solomon visits Hana in the hospital:
“I have missed you so much . If I’d never left you that summer…Well, I would have made you marry me. I would have ruined you though—I ruin everything. I ruin everything.”
...more

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Oct 15, 2018 Mary Ellen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-my-own-challenge

When I heard "generational family saga," I was afraid that this book would spend a chapter or two with one generation, then skip to the next, then the next and end up being a bunch of linked stories more than a novel.

Although this does cover four generations in a Korean family that relocates to Japan, there is much continuity and, although different characters are highlighted as the story moves along, it follows many of the major characters for much of their lives. And many of them are very rea ...more

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May 07, 2022 Kim (Kimsrdnbks) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Looking forward to watching https://tv.apple.com/us/show/pachinko... ...more

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Jun 04, 2019 Laurel Bradshaw rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: color-rating-blue, chunky-450, 20th-century, daytimers-book-club, audiobook, family-saga, japan, 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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Aug 11, 2018 Lindsey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: aapi-authors, bipoc-authors

The characters were well developed and the story was well paced. I enjoyed the beautiful writing and felt invested in the characters. Generally I don’t like a generational novel because I don’t want to switch off to different sets of characters, but I think it’s something I can appreciate a bit more now that I’m older, and this one was excellent.
Thank you to Julia for the recommendation!

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