Pachinko was at the top of every list for 2017, plus it dealt with the consequences of a single decision that has repercussions throughout the generations. From Korea to Japan, America and back, it follows a family that harbors a secret--unbeknownst to many of its members.
Jin Lee felt more comfortable foregoing certain scenes to simply tell the reader what happened. At first, it was strange, then refreshing. Major characters die with barely more than a cursory sentence. Something owed to V. Woolf's To the Lighthouse, perhaps.
A few things I'll be keeping in mind as I delve deeper into my own project.
1. I love how Jin Lee keeps her characters so tightly placed in the foreground and history, as it unfolds in all of its dramatic splendor, is mere backdrop.
2. The book doesn't belabor its losses. "History has failed us, but no matter," it opens. And the "no matter" deserves its own analysis.
3. Before this book, I had been struggling with the question of narration in my project. 1st person limited? 3rd person omniscient? I'm not 100% clear that 3rd is the right narrator for my book. I need that proximity to multiple characters and never complete unity with any one in particular.
