Pachinko, A Book Review

                 

                    “History has failed us, but no matter.”

A compelling family saga spanning four generations, Min Jin-Lee’s Pachinko begins in 1910 in Japan occupied Korea, and ends in 1989; the year Lee got the idea for this epic tale. Pachinko opens with the story of Hoonie, the club-footed and cleft-lipped man marrying a fifteen-year-old in Yeongdo a small fishing village in Busan, Korea. It is their daughter Sunja who carries the story forward as she grows up helping her mother in their boarding house. In due time Sunja falls in love with the rich Koh Hansu, an older man who dotes on her and lavishes her with expensive gifts but his affluence comes from dubious quarters. Sunja falls pregnant, but Koh Hansu already has a wife and three girls in Japan - a truth Sunja only learns after she's carrying his child. Luckily for Sunja, Baek Isak a sickly but a compassionate protestant priest offers to give the child a name and a new life in Japan. Sunja follows her husband, a man she barely knows into an inhospitable country, and as they begin their life in Japan together with Yoseb and Kyunghee, Baek Isak’s brother and sister-in-law, a future full of adversity awaits for them but not without a few snatches of happiness.

Undeniably an engaging read, Pachinko is the kind of book that comes by only once in a while. Lee’s eloquent and smooth storytelling keeps the reader thoroughly engrossed. At the heart of it, two resilient women Sunja and Kyunghee, whose indomitable spirit to live with courage and fortitude under adverse circumstances is the kernel of the story. Lee walks us through the history of Korea and Japan through her characters, and she does it with great finesse. What struck me most about this novel was the outrageously inhuman treatment the Koreans received at the hands of the Japanese during the Japanese occupation. One couldn’t even hold on to their names. The advantage laid in being more Japanese and the Koreans in Japan did everything to be Japanese which tore them apart from their countrymen who wouldn’t have them back in Korea. Another thing that struck me about Pachinko was how the male characters with all their complexities, their inadequacies and their failings, highlight the unflinching tenacity of Sunja’s and Kyunghee’s characters, and even Sunja’s mother Yangjin’s character. Lee’s women struggle, suffer irreparable heartbreaks, but they do not get bent out of shape which is the strength of this 531 pages monolithic work of staggering brilliance.

A sweeping journey through the history of adversity between the Koreans and the Japanese during the Japanese occupation, the division of North and South Korea, and it’s repercussions on the proletariat, Pachinko is a heart burner.

As Lee points out, history always fails the low working class readily sacrificed in the strife between two great powers.