pachinko [book review]

I just finished reading (devouring) Panchinko over the past 2 days.

Absolutely heartbreaking. Openly crying whilst reading on the train/plane is not a good look.

The book takes on a ‘omniscient narrator perspective’ following the lives of a Korean family in 20th century Korea and Japan; covering the annexation of Korea, WWII and beyond. The plight of Korean-Japanese during this period.

It spans multiple generations and covers themes of discrimination, love and hatred, death and the inherent uncertainty of life.

Pachinko is of course a game that is all about uncertainty and chance.

It details suffering; Suicide, death, violence. The deeper ever-present aspects of a human life. But also joy, struggle and love.

In this way, I found Pachinko to be a beautiful story about the arc of a life. The inevitable and unavoidable tragedies that occur, and how we deal with this.

Through reading the book the Japanese saying of ‘life being about participation in a world of sorrow’ kept coming to my mind. The death of certain characters broke me. The joy experienced by others was a shared joy. As all good fiction does, it put me in the mind and hearts of the various characters.

There are so many themes explored in this book, but for me, reading it at this particular point in time, it provided perspective. A zooming out on a whole generation - daughter becoming a mother becoming a grandmother (and great grandmother), sons becoming fathers, wives becoming mothers, mothers losing sons.

The arc of a life is full of suffering; it is like Pachinko - uncertain and changing.