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adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Alright I know this is highly reviewed by most people but shame I am not most people. Pachinko is a historical epic about living in the region of Northeast Asia during a time period that spans almost a century, mainly across the Japanese occupation and WW2. As a historical retelling of how it was like to live as a Korean in those times this was incredibly interesting, but otherwise the disjointed prose and massive cast of characters meant it was hard to really connect to any of them.
What I did enjoy was the educational part of this book - learning about the dynamic of Korean-Japanese relations during those days, the gender and cultural limitations that have persisted till current day, as well as the horrors of war and its impact on a more grounded everyday-man level. These were fascinating insights and the author's note at the back clearly highlighted Lee's research and attention to detail. The prose was incredibly straightforward and detached, which fit well with the narrative but also lent itself to part of my problems with the book.
Multiple times in the book the detached narrative just ends chapters with people dying. These are mentioned incredibly matter-of-factly and then there's usually a random time skip to later in the other characters' lives. Sure, it fits the theme and helps in a multi-generational story, but it's still very jarring. This also feeds into it being hard to connect to the characters, because once you start feeling for a character and their troubles, we jump cut to a random death (sometimes of the character themselves) or a major family issue that shifts the narrative POV to another character with no indication if we will ever switch back to the previous one.
All in all, this was an impressive epic that teaches much about life during that period in history, while also weaving in generational family drama. I thought it was a fun interesting read about family and belonging but otherwise the prose was a little weird. Also way too much mention of Christianity at the start almost threw me off the book entirely.
What I did enjoy was the educational part of this book - learning about the dynamic of Korean-Japanese relations during those days, the gender and cultural limitations that have persisted till current day, as well as the horrors of war and its impact on a more grounded everyday-man level. These were fascinating insights and the author's note at the back clearly highlighted Lee's research and attention to detail. The prose was incredibly straightforward and detached, which fit well with the narrative but also lent itself to part of my problems with the book.
Multiple times in the book the detached narrative just ends chapters with people dying. These are mentioned incredibly matter-of-factly and then there's usually a random time skip to later in the other characters' lives. Sure, it fits the theme and helps in a multi-generational story, but it's still very jarring. This also feeds into it being hard to connect to the characters, because once you start feeling for a character and their troubles, we jump cut to a random death (sometimes of the character themselves) or a major family issue that shifts the narrative POV to another character with no indication if we will ever switch back to the previous one.
All in all, this was an impressive epic that teaches much about life during that period in history, while also weaving in generational family drama. I thought it was a fun interesting read about family and belonging but otherwise the prose was a little weird. Also way too much mention of Christianity at the start almost threw me off the book entirely.