The Perks Of Being A Book Addict discussion
Group Books of the Month (BotM)
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Pachinko
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This was a thick book, but I was surprised by how quickly it moved. I was fully engrossed in the characters and the story!
I read Pachinko back in February, and revisiting my old review for this discussion reminded me of the strange dissonance I felt: I admired it deeply, but never quite found my way inside it.Maybe that says as much about me as about the novel. I understood the history — the displacement, discrimination, and generational weight — but I didn’t always feel it in my bones. It made me wonder how differently a book like this opens depending on the families, places, and memories each reader brings to it. I’d love to hear where Pachinko opened for others, especially in places it may have only half-opened for me.
i read Pachinko earlier this year in January and i remember loving it. i actually have it tagged as part of my "loved" shelf. the storyline was moving and entertaining and i enjoyed it immensely. i think a large part of it was the fact that the story's antagonists were so well-written, and the characterization of Sunja kept me interested the whole way through. no spoilers but i would categorize this as a "must read" at some point in everyone's life
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.