Buzzfeed actually had a semi useful quiz a few weeks ago along the lines of, “answer these questions, and we’ll recommend a book.” My result was Pachinko so when I saw it prominently displayed at Barnes and Noble, I figured it meant I should go ahead and get it. Pachinko is one of those books that is always harder to review because while very well done, as a multi-generational family drama, there is a certain amount of familiarity to the general strokes of the story. “Poor […]
Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.
This is a book about luck and love and sex and history and hate and imperialism, and, most of all, about playing the hand you’ve been dealt. Pachinko is a great big family saga. The main character, if there is one, is introduced fairly early on: Sunja, a teenager living with her mother who runs a boarding house in a fishing village in (what is now South) Korea, during Japanese occupation. A suave older man seduces her, one thing leads to the next, (this actually […]
Great Expectations
In Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee, Casey Han, a Korean American immigrant in New York City, struggles with being an Americanized daughter in a traditional Korean household. Unlike her younger sister, Tina, Casey fights against her parents’ expectations of her. For example, her parents, especially her mother, are devout Christians, but Casey enjoys casual sex and has even had an abortion. And although Casey graduated from Princeton because it was what her parents wanted/expected, she still hasn’t decided what she wants to […]
History has failed us, but no matter.
It took me 200-300 pages before I think I understood the opening of the novel, which is the title of this post. It felt tritely deep, or falsely deep. But it makes sense now that I have the full scope of the novel. I would have to imagine I won’t read a better novel published this year, this year. I might very well read better novels, but this could very well be the best novel published in the year 2017. The novel itself spans eight […]