PACHINKO by Min Jin Lee

For me, this book was long and somewhat tedious.  The writing is good, and the storyline is easy to follow, but it did not affect me emotionally as deeply as it should have.  Sunja, a teenager in early 20^th century Korea, becomes pregnant by a married man.  She then marries a Christian minister, Isak, who feels compelled to help her out after her family nurses him back to health from an almost fatal bout of tuberculosis.  They join his brother and sister-in-law in Osaka, Japan, where bigotry against Koreans is the norm.  Both couples struggle to make a living, especially after Isak is imprisoned for religious/political reasons.  In some ways, this book reminds me of Unbroken, in that the Japanese come across as cruel and unreasonable.  Unfortunately, conditions in Korea become more and more horrendous as the century progresses, so that these Korean immigrants have no choice really but to stay in Japan.  Even as their success grows in the pachinko (a cross between pinball and slot machines) business, they know that obtaining a passport is practically impossible.  I felt sympathy for their plight and disdain for the Japanese government, but I never really bonded with the characters.  The men, in particular, make some bizarre decisions that I did not understand at all, especially one at the end that I found particularly disappointing.  The women, on the other hand, are salt-of-the-earth types who do the best they can under the circumstances.  They are hard-working, enterprising, and undaunted by obstacles, such as a husband’s pride.