Pachinko

English language

Published Aug. 3, 2017

ISBN:
978-1-78669-137-8
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3 stars (3 reviews)

Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.

Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story.

Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival.

1 edition

Manageable epic

4 stars

We inherited this book from a generous fellow train passenger who had just finished it. My thanks to her!

The story follows multiple generations of a Korean family, spanning their resettlement in pre-WW2 Japan through to the early post-war decades. There are spadefuls of tragedies and poignant events as the family members' lifetime trajectories trace out examples of what it may have been like to move in with your colonisers and reconcile sense of place once the boot has been ungracefully lifted off your ancestral origin.

Elegantly written and absorbing. Possibly not one for people who demand explicit closure on a story arcs, but impressive in use of pace.

avatar for JesseLiberty

rated it

3 stars