A review by thatotherjlo
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-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? It's complicated

4.75

As a historian, an immigrant, and a lover of multi-generational sagas, how could I not love this book? While I'm preparing a review, I keep track of all the things I like and dislike about the book, and with this one not only could I not come up with things for the "dislike" column, I ended up needing the space for all the things I did like! These include:

• the motif/theme of fate through the game of pachinko, with the characters' fortunes rising and falling through history as a matter of luck/fate

• the cycles of Sunja's life, as her own fortune rises and falls
  (I loved how, between the highs and lows of her trajectory, she often finds herself contemplating the dirt under her nails -- Lee doesn't draw the connection out explicitly, but it's such a symbol of Sunja's roots and continually brings up the question of to what degree her life was changed by leaving Korea.)

• the attention to women's experiences -- and not just women, but "little" women, women who would seem unimportant in the broad scope of history, but who actually make up the bulk of that history. I love any book that shows how day-to-day life continued in the midst of major historical events.

• all the different forms of diaspora represented throughout the novel

• how the story grows through time, getting more complex and adding more and more characters as we go through time, just as families do themselves

In this way, Pachinko is kind of like the cabbages Sunja searches for in Osaka (and turns into that life-saving kimchi!): so multi-layered, and every idea can be pulled aside to reveal another. Lee has constructed her novel like a tight clump of stories, ideas, and characters, each separate but so deeply connected at their heart.