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4.5 stars. I really enjoyed this book. I often find historical fictions to be a little slow, but this book was absolutely a page-turner for me. The plot felt fast and there was a lot that occurred; granted the story does cover about 60 years’ worth of time where a lot was changing geo-politically.
One thing I especially loved was how the writing/narrative style seemed to change with the social culture over time. At the beginning, Sunja’s sexual experiences were discussed very differently than Hana’s. were at the end The language of the characters’ speech and inner monologues became less formal (or more like today’s) as we moved from the 1930s through to the 1990s. These subtle adjustments to match the era show how much time and work Lee put into this book.
I’ve read a couple of books recently that take place in the mid-late 1900s and it’s interesting to compare them. Specifically, [b:Rebecca|17899948|Rebecca|Daphne du Maurier|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386605169l/17899948._SX50_.jpg|46663] and [b:A Woman Is No Man|34313931|A Woman Is No Man|Etaf Rum|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533072101l/34313931._SY75_.jpg|55370568]. The former takes place in 1930s England and the latter in late 1900s in Palestine/America. It was interesting to see the differences in language and opinions around women’s sexuality in each book. In A Woman is No Man (which is the most modern in time period), it’s social suicide to even associate with men outside of marriage and sex certainly isn’t viewed as anything more than a wife’s duty to produce sons. In Rebecca, out-of-marriage sex is acknowledged, and pre-marital sex happens, but people are discreet since it’s still taboo. But in Pachinko, it really seemed that no one was that upset by pre-marital sex as long as it didn’t produce a child out of wedlock. All three of these books are fictional, so take this with a grain of salt, but it was a cultural comparison that kept coming back to me while reading this book.
Speaking of the 1930s, I am eternally grossed out by how many Freudian father/daughter dynamics there are between husband/wife in these novels. In Rebecca, Maxim de Winter (42ish) is constantly referring to how childlike his wife (21ish) is and how he loves her innocence in a (to me) creepy way. In Pachinko, Hansu (34 initially) grooms Sunja (17, I think?) by acting like her big brother? It’s gross and I hate it.
The only reason that I can’t give this book 5 stars is because of the ending – I did not like it. It just felt like a nothing ending to me. It was abrupt and I don’t feel like there was any message or moral to the ending. I would’ve been happy with an ending where you go “oh, wow, nothing happened because they have to just keep going on,” but I didn’t get the sense that that was the point at the end of the book. Maybe the ending just went over my head, in which case I’ll update my rating when someone explains it to me, but I was just hoping for a little more than what we got.
One thing I especially loved was how the writing/narrative style seemed to change with the social culture over time. At the beginning, Sunja’s sexual experiences were discussed very differently than Hana’s. were at the end The language of the characters’ speech and inner monologues became less formal (or more like today’s) as we moved from the 1930s through to the 1990s. These subtle adjustments to match the era show how much time and work Lee put into this book.
I’ve read a couple of books recently that take place in the mid-late 1900s and it’s interesting to compare them. Specifically, [b:Rebecca|17899948|Rebecca|Daphne du Maurier|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386605169l/17899948._SX50_.jpg|46663] and [b:A Woman Is No Man|34313931|A Woman Is No Man|Etaf Rum|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533072101l/34313931._SY75_.jpg|55370568]. The former takes place in 1930s England and the latter in late 1900s in Palestine/America. It was interesting to see the differences in language and opinions around women’s sexuality in each book. In A Woman is No Man (which is the most modern in time period), it’s social suicide to even associate with men outside of marriage and sex certainly isn’t viewed as anything more than a wife’s duty to produce sons. In Rebecca, out-of-marriage sex is acknowledged, and pre-marital sex happens, but people are discreet since it’s still taboo. But in Pachinko, it really seemed that no one was that upset by pre-marital sex as long as it didn’t produce a child out of wedlock. All three of these books are fictional, so take this with a grain of salt, but it was a cultural comparison that kept coming back to me while reading this book.
Speaking of the 1930s, I am eternally grossed out by how many Freudian father/daughter dynamics there are between husband/wife in these novels. In Rebecca, Maxim de Winter (42ish) is constantly referring to how childlike his wife (21ish) is and how he loves her innocence in a (to me) creepy way. In Pachinko, Hansu (34 initially) grooms Sunja (17, I think?) by acting like her big brother? It’s gross and I hate it.
The only reason that I can’t give this book 5 stars is because of the ending – I did not like it. It just felt like a nothing ending to me. It was abrupt and I don’t feel like there was any message or moral to the ending. I would’ve been happy with an ending where you go “oh, wow, nothing happened because they have to just keep going on,” but I didn’t get the sense that that was the point at the end of the book. Maybe the ending just went over my head, in which case I’ll update my rating when someone explains it to me, but I was just hoping for a little more than what we got.