So tonnes of people loved Pachinko. The Netgalley blurb gives me:
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN OF THE YEAR * NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 *A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE Roxane Gay’s Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER
Okay. But you know what: I did not love Pachinko. It isn’t as if I think the book is unimportant; in fact, I think it is an important book, documenting the story of ethnic Koreans in Japan over generations. It just isn’t very … um … good isn’t the right word, because it isn’t the goodness or badness that annoyed me throughout. I guess, at a level, it’s fairly shallow a book. It’s almost like if a photo album was a novel: we get scenes, and strung together, the scenes tell a story, but there is just as much narrative in the gaps that gets completely written off as lonely sentences here and there (i.e., Oh, so and so’s wife died, moving on). As for the characters, again, somewhat stock ones, like in a photograph, never moving very far beneath the surface. You can see the people in the photos, you can see them smiling, or fake-smiling, or frowning and say to yourself, “On that day they were happy/faking/angry,” but in the end, a photo doesn’t tell you what type of happiness they felt, whether some of their fakery was tinged with regret, whether the anger was a joke on the photographer, etc. Pachinko is like that. You can almost feel it all, but really, it’s pretty flat.
But then again, what do I know compared to everyone else who love, love, loved this book.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee went on sale February 7, 2017.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.