Reviews tagging 'Abortion'

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

133 reviews

oceanwriter's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book hadn’t been on my radar but I have seen it around over the past few years. I picked it up when it was selected as a group read. I’m glad I got to go into it with an open mind. I came away with mixed emotions. 

 

Beginning in the early 1900s, we meet Sunja and her family living in Korea. She meets Hansu and envisions a future with him, especially once she discovers she’s pregnant. Unbeknownst to her, he has a wife and children in Japan. Refusing to see him again, she accepts the offer of marriage from Isak, an ailing minister. Together they set off for Japan to live with Isak’s brother and his wife with Isak adopting Noa and raising him as his own. Parts two and three follow the lineage of Sunja’s family through to the 1980s. 

 

As I was reading the book’s first part, I anticipated this being a five-star read. I was completely absorbed in the plot, characters, setting, history, writing… all of it. Part two started to lose me a little bit, especially reaching the second half of it. Part three was an absolute headache. I no longer had a grasp on the characters or the many plot lines the story now involved. 

 

So many of the monumental moments of the book, particularly in the second half, start, occur, and end in the span of one to three paragraphs — if that. Because of this, there’s no chance to build a bond with a number of the characters or their situations. After a slower build in the beginning, all of a sudden switching to fast pacing and sporadic time jumps was dizzying. I cannot recall most of this second of the book as my reading was interrupted to go back and see if I missed something, only to realize a major plot point was dropped in a singular sentence with little to no explanation around it. 

 

I’m definitely walking away feeling disappointed after so much enjoyment in the beginning, but I’m glad I went along for the ride. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Suicide, Terminal illness, and Death

Moderate: Death of parent, War, and Sexual content

Minor: Abortion and Miscarriage

blairwithredhair's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide

Minor: Abortion

hankhank's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

I really enjoyed this book. The vividness of the story's world was built up from the tiniest personal details, into a whole society. The main cast of characters felt like real people to me, and I'll miss their company. It was especially impressive how the author moved through time so seamlessly, and how characters we met first as children aged so realistically. There are lots of terrible things that happened in the story, and many sad moments, but also many sweet, funny, beautiful things, too. I would recommend this to anyone who like stories about people.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Grief

Moderate: Xenophobia, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Infertility, Death, Death of parent, Racism, Addiction, Abortion, and War

brinxleyx's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This is a new book in my favorites list. Pachinko addresses every issue under the sun within the cultural context it was written in. I have never been so affected by a character, and this story provides many many different stories throughout the four generations of the family it focuses on. This book was both beautiful and culturally informative. There was so much I learned, and I definitely cried.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Sexism, Xenophobia, Adult/minor relationship, and Suicide

Minor: Abortion, Ableism, Addiction, Bullying, and Alcohol

kyrajade's review against another edition

informative sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

I think this is an important story to tell, but I think that it wasn't written very well. The first 250 pages I was wedded to the original cast of characters, but then for the sake of making the narrative multi-generational, the author began introducing characters very shallowly who you were for some reason supposed to care about, and then the stories of these characters and the widening time skips between chapters meant that characters from the first half who you liked and felt an attachment too were picked off in the background. The author made horrible and traumatic things happen in this book and yet you didn't get to experience any of the grief of the characters because she skimmed over it with a time skip. The whole thing felt very emotionally unsastisfying, but the actual context and history of the story is an interesting read. For a character driven story, the characters introduced in the second half are flat and semi-transparent. I really enjoy multi-generational stories (100 Years of Solitude or Do Not Say We Have Nothing) and one thing the authors in both books do is carefully manage the number of characters in the book to give the reader the experience of spending time on the page with each one. This book just became too ambitious and lost so much in the process.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Xenophobia, War, Sexism, Racism, Adult/minor relationship, Police brutality, Death, and Colonisation

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Alcoholism, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Abortion, Suicide, and Trafficking

thenoboshow's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Hate crime, Pregnancy, Death, Bullying, Drug abuse, Infidelity, Homophobia, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Abortion, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Blood, Cancer, Car accident, Child death, Classism, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Grief, Infertility, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, War, and Xenophobia

drkng31's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Classism, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Drug use, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Death, War, Cancer, Terminal illness, Abortion, Addiction, Colonisation, Infertility, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Bullying, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, and Xenophobia

sas_lk's review against another edition

emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was the type of novel I had to digest slowly, and take the time to enjoy every chapter. I really liked the first two thirds, they felt like 4.5-5 stars at parts. 
The last third is unfortunately what lost me a little, and it is also why I am giving it 4 stars instead of something higher. At the end it started feeling a little disjointed, like the author lost track of the story a little bit. We were following the POVs of way more characters all of a sudden and quite a few felt pointless - atleast the depth that the author went into. And then it felt like the author added a couple traumatic things to keep the book sad and shocking without delving into these traumatic events. It felt like at the end she was speeding through her writing instead of taking her time with the events and happenings like she did in the first 2 thirds - this made me lose touch with the characters, and I almost felt like I stopped knowing them; like they were different characters than the ones I had been following throughout the whole book.
Overall, a great book, and I would definitely recommend it, I just wish the author had sat with the last third a little longer and not tried to do too much.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Miscarriage, Suicide, Death, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Xenophobia, War, Sexism, Death of parent, Grief, Colonisation, Car accident, Infertility, Suicidal thoughts, Racism, Alcoholism, Racial slurs, Misogyny, Hate crime, Bullying, Abortion, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

ryan4092's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual content, Death of parent, and Suicide

Minor: Child death, Miscarriage, Infertility, War, and Abortion

moonmoonsun's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Infertility, Police brutality, Racism, Alcoholism, Cancer, Child death, Domestic abuse, Trafficking, War, Abortion, Addiction, Chronic illness, Cursing, Deportation, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Death of parent, Grief, and Infidelity