SAYS FYL

Book Review: Pachinko, by Min Jee Lin (Grand Central)

Descriptive prose, lyrical language, similes, and all those identifiers of a solid novel—there is none of that here.

Instead, Pachinko reads like a story passed down from generation to generation, stripped of flourishes and left with only what is essential and important. It’s the saga of one Korean family, beginning in a small fishing village in the early 1900s, who endure poverty, war, migration, and prejudice in Japan.

At its heart, it’s the story of women—mothers and daughters whose sacrifices, resilience, and quiet strength hold the family together when history and circumstance try to tear them apart.

The writing is deceptively simple, almost plain, but that’s what makes it powerful. Without ornament, the story has room to breathe. The choices, heartbreaks, and small triumphs of this family take center stage.

I couldn’t put it down until I was done.

Some Quotes

Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.

History has failed us, but no matter.

There could be no humiliation without dignity, no exile without a home to be banished from, no longing without the possibility of return.

At the root of all our lives was love — the one thing they could not take away.

The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of it.

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Feature image by Tianshu Liu on Unsplash