Pachinko

Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee,  tells the story of a Korean family over several generations.

Teenage Sunja works in her family’s boardinghouse in Korea, and falls in love with with a handsome Japanese businessman, Hansu. When she discovers she’s pregnant, Hansu explains that he’ll love and support her, and the new baby,  but he’s already married back in Japan. Sunja can’t accept a life as the secret other woman, although he offers her stability and luxury far beyond what she can experience working in the boardinghouse or what she could expect as an unmarried mother. 

Sunja’s pregnancy sets most of the novel in motion, although the story doesn’t start there. The novel shows us how Sunja’s life is a product of her parents’ lives, and as we discover other characters (Isak, Hansu, but even smaller characters like Etsuko), they’re also clearly the product of their families and family decisions.  One of the things I love in a good family saga is seeing one relationship affect the next, and seeing how one generation affects their children, intentionally or not, and Pachinko really excels. The highs and lows of this book are set in motion years and years earlier.

Like in Go, Pachinko tells the story of Japanese-occupied Korea, and the Koreans who lived in Japan as a result (but were never accepted as Japanese citizens), through one family’s experiences.  Fans of the final chapters of the novel, that deal with Korean-Americans and with the younger generation will enjoy Min Jin Lee’s other novel, Free Food For Milionaires.