Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
Jun. 27th, 2019 12:09 pmThinking again of what ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija said about posting when we finish books, I thought I'd share my Goodreads review of Pachinko, an intergenerational novel about a Korean family that emigrates to Japan in the 1930s. The story goes up to 1989. Japanese racism toward Koreans is a big part of the story (though the characters in the novel are a pleasingly mixed bunch--not all Japanese are evil villains; not all Koreans are long-suffering heroes), but it's more about how people face their problems, what mindsets they bring to them and how these help them or let them down. Here's what I wrote:
I really loved the way this story was told; it's a rare case of an omniscient narrator in modern fiction, and it's graceful, lean, strong, and moving. I'm talking about moments like this, where a boy wants to stay with his dying father:
Its spareness and directness makes me realize how clotted writing can sometimes get, just tripping over itself to dissect people's feeling and motivations in minute detail.
That said, in the second half of the book I sometimes wished we had a little more time inside some of the characters and maybe fewer shocking situations. I found one character death surprising and distressing, and while I can see how the author lay the groundwork for it--it's not implausible--I felt a little bit like I could feel the hand of the author *doing* this to the character as opposed to it arising naturally in the story. Or maybe it's just that I wanted more things to work out for people at that point--but that's not how life goes.
Still, the characters were lovely, and the way they interacted with each other and faced their problems was completely absorbing, and there was a lot of wisdom in the story.
rachelmanija said about posting when we finish books, I thought I'd share my Goodreads review of Pachinko, an intergenerational novel about a Korean family that emigrates to Japan in the 1930s. The story goes up to 1989. Japanese racism toward Koreans is a big part of the story (though the characters in the novel are a pleasingly mixed bunch--not all Japanese are evil villains; not all Koreans are long-suffering heroes), but it's more about how people face their problems, what mindsets they bring to them and how these help them or let them down. Here's what I wrote:I really loved the way this story was told; it's a rare case of an omniscient narrator in modern fiction, and it's graceful, lean, strong, and moving. I'm talking about moments like this, where a boy wants to stay with his dying father:
The child hadn't realized how much he'd missed his father until he returned. The ache of missing him had surfaced in his small, concave chest, and he felt anxious abut the pain that was sure to return. If he remained home, Noa felt certain that his father would be okay. They wouldn't even have to talk. Why couldn't he study at home the way his father had? Noa wanted to ask this, but it was not in his nature to argue.
Its spareness and directness makes me realize how clotted writing can sometimes get, just tripping over itself to dissect people's feeling and motivations in minute detail.
That said, in the second half of the book I sometimes wished we had a little more time inside some of the characters and maybe fewer shocking situations. I found one character death surprising and distressing, and while I can see how the author lay the groundwork for it--it's not implausible--I felt a little bit like I could feel the hand of the author *doing* this to the character as opposed to it arising naturally in the story. Or maybe it's just that I wanted more things to work out for people at that point--but that's not how life goes.
Still, the characters were lovely, and the way they interacted with each other and faced their problems was completely absorbing, and there was a lot of wisdom in the story.
