Pachinko is a sweeping generational novel that starts out in the early 1900's . We meet Sunja and her mother in Korea. They have been on their own for a long time, they take in boards to make ends meet. Sunja falls in love with an older man from Japan. He is older, wiser, and makes her feel so special. But when she ends up pregnant, she discovers that Koh Hansu is already married and has children. Rather than accept his offer to be his mistress, Sunja decides to have the baby on her own, even though she knows it will be difficult for both her and the baby. And then one of her mother's boarders, a preacher with tuberculosis offers to marry her and raise the baby as his own. Those events set the story up for an epic tale that spans generations.
I probably would not have ever read Pachinko if it hadn't been this month's selection for my book club. The story is rich and the characters have depth, but a book that spans nearly a century is bound to have a lot of characters. I had a hard time with the pronunciations of the name, so I listened to part of the book on Audible and that helped me a lot. As the years go by, you watch a family struggle to survive difficulties like war, famine, death, and more. As one of my book club friends said, life is hard. Pachinko does a good job of illustrating just how hard it can be and how it can be generational.
Bottom Line - While Pachinko wasn't my normal kind of book, I did find it enjoyable and I am glad that I read it.
Details:
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- On Instagram
- Pages: 496
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
- Publication Date: 2/7/17
- Buy it Here!
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