Pachinko

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed the first half of this novel about South Korean immigrants in Japan. The setting was new to me, and the set up was well-thought out, different and yet relatable. But then it evolved into more like vignettes of Korean-Japanese without a lot of preamble or follow-through. Even the characters that carried over from the first half seemed to change too drastically to be accounted for, making them almost different people. I would have preferred less breadth and more focus. Also, for a novel named Pachinko, and the game parlors playing a integral role in several of the characters lives, there was little description of the job or the game. I even had to google it to understand what it was. However, overall the experiences of this family opened my eyes to a different history and made me care.

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