Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)

This book was hard to put down. One more reason to quit my day job! There are a lot of interesting multi-generational family sagas out there. However, Pachinko is at the top of the pile due to excellent writing and a unique story line. Pachinko spans the time period from 1910-1989 and follows a Korean family as they move from Korea to Japan. The story begins with Hoonie, a man born with physical deformities who is loved and nurtured by his parents. The family owns a boardinghouse. Japan has annexed Korea and times are tough. Because of difficult financial times, Hoonie is able to find a bride. Yangjin and Hoonie have a happy but hard life and are blessed with a daughter named Sunja. As a young girl, Sunja meets Koh Hansu. He is wealthy and handsome, but he is also not as he seems. They have an affair and she becomes pregnant. She makes the difficult choice to leave Korea for Japan, as the wife of one of her mother's boarders, Isak. He is a minister from Osaka who has been ill all of his life with tuberculosis. Isak and Sunja go to Japan and he raises her son, Noa, as his own. They later have a son together named Mozasu. In Japan they live with Isak's older brother and his wife. The brothers are very different. Noa is intellectual while Mozasu struggles in school. The family scrimps and saves to make sure that Noa can attend school. Mozasu is clever and ends up working in a pachinko parlor. Throughout Sunja's life, Koh Hansu is never far away and gives unwelcome interference in an effort to give his son a good life. Noa eventually discovers the truth of his birth with devastating results. Mozasu prospers, as does his family. Much much more happens in the book, but I do not want to ruin the twists and turns. Pachinko is set against the backdrop of WWI, WWII, and the Korean War. Koreans were treated as second class citizens in Japan. They had to change their names. Some Koreans were able to pass as Japanese. Those that could got better jobs and better treatment, so they guarded that secret from bosses, friends, and even spouses. After the wars, going back to Korea was often not an option. Pachinko parlors also play a major role in the book. A parlor may be shady and mob connected. Pachinko is a type of gambling game, like vertical pinball. Parlors still exist today. I Googled it! In addition to highlighting Korean history (about which I knew next to nothing), the story is very compelling. I cared about the characters, even the unlikeable ones. The book is full of tragedy, loyalty and betrayal, suffering, and triumph. But this is no fluffy beach read. The writing is lovely without being too flowery. I am still thinking about this book, though I finished it two weeks ago. I highly recommend this book and I plan to read Ms. Lee's other book, Free Food for Millionaires.

A solid read … well written and family story told. Felt a little bit too “long winded.” Not an overly uplifting story, but definitely seemed to exemplify the challenges of being an immigrant under not always easy circumstances and showed the resilience of people. The topic of immigration is a story that continues even today - interesting topic for discussion.

This literary tour de force is a story of family, a story of immigration, a story of politics, a story of perseverance, and, despite important and memorable male characters, it is a story of women. This saga begins in a small impoverished fishing village in what is now South Korea. Life is hard work. Our primary female character is Sunja who at the beginning of the story is a young girl working hard beside her widowed mother to run a small boarding house for poor fishermen. It is a difficult but honorable life. When Sunja becomes pregnant, she faces dishonor and disgrace. But fortune intervenes with a young tubercular Presbyterian minister who offers marriage and a move to Japan. We follow the family through persecution, through grinding poverty, through World War II, and on through the next generations. The story is both personal and sweeping. I became profoundly aware of my ignorance about Korean history and the status of Korean immigrants in Japan. It is fascinating and disturbing. There are many good reasons why this novel has received so many awards and so much recognition. With skillful writing and a solid structure, this book is very readable so the pages turn quickly. Min Jin Lee did a brilliant job weaving the very human narrative with the cultural, historical, and political details. It makes for a rich tapestry. This is a book that will stick with me. It was a good selection for our book group, and I am very glad that I read it.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a family saga about a four generations of a Korean family that is set in Korea and Japan. It’s a National Book Award finalist, and, in what may be an even greater honor than that, it made my Favorite Books list. I have found that it is easier to explain why I don’t like a particular book or to point out a book’s flaws than it is to explain why I absolutely loved one. It’s like explaining why a rainbow is beautiful. I can talk about how the colors are pretty or how it made me feel, but there is something about rainbows, sunsets, and the best works of art that transcends easy explanation. You just have to experience them. Read Pachinko. The format of the book is straightforward. It proceeds chronologically from about 1900-ish to 1989 and follows various characters that belong to one family. It never sprawls out of control – there aren’t 37 second-cousins that you will have to keep track of – and there aren’t flash-backs and flash-forwards that could potentially cause confusion. There are occasional Japanese or Korean words sprinkled around, but their meaning is apparent from the context. I don’t speak a lick of those languages, and I followed everything without ever having to consult a dictionary. The prose is simple and straightforward, generally consisting of short, direct sentences. There’s not a lot of fluff. Therefore, the book reads quickly, despite being an almost 500 page family saga about sexism, fate, hard work, destiny, chance, war, poverty, racism, familial obligations, identity, immigration, citizenship, language, education, opportunity, community, and faith. The main characters are diverse, interesting, flawed, and generally fundamentally good people. The characters are not very Dynamic (at least in an obvious way), but they weren’t really intended to be. This isn’t a story populated with characters that have grand, clear character arcs. This made them feel more realistic to me. How many people do you know that are on a Hero’s Journey? Most people I know just try to keep their heads down, work to put food on the table, and hope for good opportunities for their children. I’ve said before that I am a fan of history, and I was generally ignorant of Korean culture in Japan. Pachinko is not some dry history lesson, though. It’s as entertaining as a soap opera. You should read it.

I rate it as a 9/10 In the early 1900s, Sunja, a young Korean lady, works with her mother at a boarding house in Yeongdo after the passing of her loving father Hoonie. When she was around 16, she falls in love with a mysterious man who saved her from being assaulted, and when she tells him she is pregnant, he confesses to be married and to having a family in Japan, but still would like her to be his mistress in Korea. Feeling betrayed and ashamed, Sunja does not accept it and ends the relationship with him, keeping the child but never revealing its father’s identity to anyone. At the boarding house, a Christian minister learns what happened, and since he believes to be dying from tuberculosis, he decides to marry Sunja, give the child his name, and also in search of giving meaning to his own life. All is then set, and they move to Osaka, where the story unfolds. Pachinko is a patchwork of stories, having as the background the Japanese occupation in Korea and the hardships Sunja and her family (representing most Koreans from that time) endured while trying to simply survive. It is a combination of suffering, pain, shame, violence in all its forms, but also unconditional love, sacrifice, bonds, and determination. It is raw and blunt, touching nerves you didn’t know that were there, and it makes us realize how fortunate some people are for not ever having to go through any kind of prejudice nor hardship because of your nationality, or how you look. Sunja’s story is no different from many other families’ stories around the world, and the way Min Jin Lee describes it makes us feel like we are there, living it all first-hand, and therefore impossible to finish it with dry eyes.

Pachinko is the epic story of people like you and me. Through 4 generations, we learn of the struggle of ordinary koreans that had to immigrate to Japan. It's a tale of hardship, love and family. From the very beginning, it's easy to feel connected to the characters. But most of all, it's a story about emotional connections. No matter how capable or intelligent you are, without love and support, it's hard to make it in the world. Pachinko shows that with incredible clarity. The value of human understanding is shown many times throughout the story. I reccomend this book to everyone who enjoys learning new cultures and sensitive, rich storytelling.

I was raised up in Osaka. When I was an elementary school student, I used to commute to coaching school in Tsuruhashi. Although I noticed that there were a lot of yakiniku restaurants, I wasn't interested in Korean stuff so I was completely ignorant of the history until I read this book. The discrimination of being Zainichi tyousenjin in Japan is depicted in this book, I think it still persists more or less even in this era. I remembered that my dad said that he hates tyousenjin. They were cunning and dirty. I suppose we unconsciously need someone whose position is extremely low and mocked badly by others like the hierarchical system in India. It shows us that things go well thanks to it. I was impressed by the author's deep insight of human psychology and well research and understanding. I think Noa's weakness represents Japanese character. Japanese are very sensitive and serious(not all though). I couldn't dislike Hansu throughout the stories. He was Yakuza. But his devotion to Sunja seemed true. If I were Sunja, I might be a Hansu's second wife haha.

Buen libro

Pachinko was a very lucky read. I randomly bought it and didn't think much of it. As soon as I read the first line I couldn't put it down anymore. It's been many years that I read a 500 page book so quickly (full time job, children, household...). I took every single second possible to keep reading. This is so carefully thought out. A beautifully written saga that follows a family over 5 generations in the war times of Korea and Japan. I never really thought about the war over there (being Austrian we are very caught up in our own dark history) - this book opened my eyes so much - the characters are so deep and the author is most obviously very smart and careful in writing this incredible book! This is an absolute 10/10 and more!