After hearing so much about this book, I’m glad I finally read it, but I’m disappointed I didn’t connect with the characters as much as I had hoped. I expected a multigenerational saga through especially difficult years of war and exiles to contain dark elements, but every relationship was so twisted. The book does an incredible job exploring the fetishization that can emerge in a relationships when one partner is a minority in some way or another, and while some of these cases were clearly done and heartbreaking, it would have been nice to see at least one couple on equal footing, or at least have less rape and grooming. While the struggles were realistic, I wish there had been more solidarity between the characters. The developments that were the best were the relationships between women: working side by side, lending support, looking out for each other. But even those relationships fell apart in the end. The events that happened between the time jumps also bothered me. So much page space was given to the minute details of the inside of a factory, the way pachinko works, the history of other minor details. While some of that was interesting, it took away from time I would have rather spent with the characters. How did a younger brother cope with the loss of his older brother? What about that older brothers wife and children? How did a widow feel when her husband, who had been very ill for a long time, passed? These major events impacted some of the characters greatly, but the reader spent time getting to know the other characters only for them to drift into the background. The way Christianity was promoted by certain characters often left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I think this would be a great book to read with a bookclub, and I’ll definitely be reflecting on these elements that bothered me specifically and what artistic meaning they may have.