Between the Lines - Pachinko
Thoughts Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is a gripping multi-generational saga of a 20th century Korean family. The story opens in a fishing village in Korea shortly after the Japanese annexation, then follows this family to Japan from the years before World War II to the late 1980’s. I am embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing about this time period: nothing about Korea or the Korean immigrant story in Japan. Pachinko is both a heartbreaking and tender fictional story, but it is the historical world that opened up to me that made the book even more compelling. I wouldn’t say Pachinko is perfect; the last third which covered the later years felt rushed. And some readers might not like that the book switches perspectives often and sometimes suddenly. Personally, I did not take issue with that, and I enjoyed the stories of the minor characters as much as the major ones. Overall, I see Pachinko as a story of what it is like to be an immigrant, to be a second-class c...