3.5 stars

I received a free digital copy from the author/publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest feedback.

Pachinko starts in the early 1900s and subsequently follows the lives of one Korean family, as one daughter becomes pregnant outside of marriage, is married to a kindly Protestant preacher and moves to Japan. She then has to raise her children and they theirs while all feeling a connection to a Korea and trying to live as second-class citizens in Japan.

I enjoyed this slow-moving but graceful story starting with the disabled but kindly Hoomie and his shy but surprisingly strong daughter Sunja and eventually moving on to her children, the sensitive, smart Noa and tenacious and tough Mozaka and finally ending with Solomon. Each member of the family were different but intriguing to follow and for the most part, I really enjoyed following them along with their lives.

I feel like i learned a lot in this book. I haven’t read a lot of books set in Japan or Korea and I definitely got a look into Korean and Japanese culture from both Sunja’s childhood to her children’s and finally her grandchild’s in the 70s and 80s. I didn’t know how Koreans were treated by Japanese people and it seemed to last all the way up to the late 80s when Solomon was in his twenties and I found this really interesting. Another thing I noticed when Sunja was the main character of the story was how much she had to answer to the main man in the family. First it was Isak, who was quite gentle but then there was Yoseb who had a lot of ideas on how she should raise Noa and how Sunja and his wife should work and how they should earn money for the family. He wasn’t necessarily a bad man but he could have made life easier for the women, and made some decisions that made everyone’s lives harder.

I thought I would love Noa and I did when he was a child but I eventually grew to really dislike him and his decisions. I couldn’t understand why he turned from everyone including an aunt and uncle who loved him and a younger brother who idolised him when he found out the truth of his parentage. The fact that he was able to just shove Sunja aside, who had worked her skin to the bone for years to give him a good life, and have a family separate from her was really cruel to me and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I also don’t quite understand his reasons behind

his suicide - his obsession with bad blood, and maybe paying for the sins of the father (and I don’t think he necessarily seemed depressed?) but then leaving behind that grief and sorrow for a young family and Sunja.

It seemed odd to me.

I got a bit tired near the end of the book and at that stage I wasn’t sure when it would end and how. The ending was a bit flat, but the story itself wasn’t wildly exciting so I understand why there wasn’t an epic conclusion.