Pachinko

Pachinko
By Min Jin Lee
Grand Central Publishing, 2017. 496 pgs. Fiction

Sunja's life is forever altered after a fling with a charming man near the markets of her home in the small fishing village of Yeongdo, Korea. Pregnant and with few options, Sunja is given an opportunity for a hopeful future--with the caveat that she must move to Japan, long considered Korea's oppressor. This multigenerational story begins with Sunja's emigration in the 1930s and extends up to the late 1980s through the plights of her sons, her grandchildren, and their friends and lovers, with all the ethnicity, class, and gender-related tensions those relationships abide.

If, like me, you are captivated by stories that take place in Asia or have Asian protagonists (The Good Earth, anything by Lisa See or Haruki Murakami), this National Book Award finalist is a must-read. The novel has some of the trappings of an epic tale, with a mysteriously compelling hero(ine), a journey from home to a foreign land, and a narrator that feels at times distant, simply there to relate the story and only rarely comment on the progress. This last quality, too, makes the novel feel incredibly modern, allowing the reader to interpret tragedy or happy ending out of the story, which, depending on the reader, could be frustrating or freeing. My favorite parts of the book were the tangents into the quiet lives of minor characters--alighting briefly on their histories, their vulnerabilities, their memories of their parents, sisters, brothers. When it was finally time to leave Sunja, Mozasu, Solomon, and Hana at the end of the 496 pages, I wasn't ready.

DMR