Pachinko - Rambling Readers

512 pages

English language

Published Feb. 13, 2017

ISBN:: 978-1-4555-6392-0

(3 reviews)

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 …

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.

3 editions

technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Better than the TV series

5 stars

I read Pachinko after watching the first episode of the TV show and couldn't get into it, thought I'd try the book and see if I liked it better. And it is much better. The TV series has its charms: lush visuals, excellent acting including from some of my favorite kdrama actors, but in the adaptation they lost how the book is a winding multi-generational story anchored by the women and one woman in particular, Sunja. An oft-uttered phrase in the book, something like "It's a woman's lot to suffer" conveys this theme, but the TV show first of all time hops episodes back and forth, and this is one reason why, introduces extra stories that weren't in the book, almost entirely about the male characters who were not as central in the book. It's as if they got studio notes - "can we have more stories about the men?" …

I read Pachinko after watching the first episode of the TV show and couldn't get into it, thought I'd try the book and see if I liked it better. And it is much better. The TV series has its charms: lush visuals, excellent acting including from some of my favorite kdrama actors, but in the adaptation they lost how the book is a winding multi-generational story anchored by the women and one woman in particular, Sunja. An oft-uttered phrase in the book, something like "It's a woman's lot to suffer" conveys this theme, but the TV show first of all time hops episodes back and forth, and this is one reason why, introduces extra stories that weren't in the book, almost entirely about the male characters who were not as central in the book. It's as if they got studio notes - "can we have more stories about the men?" Yep, it's a woman's lot to suffer.

Benjamin Asher

rated it

April 2, 2023

Chiagha

rated it

Jan 26