Pachinko

I'm a sucker for reading something before watching a movie or television adaptation, so when I heard good things about this year's Pachinko series on Apple TV+ I decided I had to read this.

This is a multi-generational drama set in a culture and period that I did not have a lot of familiarity with. I actually somehow had no idea that Japan had annexed Korea for the better part of the first half of the 20th century, so seeing a representation of racism and oppression in that setting was something new to me and drove me to a bit of further reading on the history.

Between the writing and the narration of the audiobook I listened to, the whole book had a stoic matter-of-fact quality to it that worked a lot of the time in a somber “life trudges forward” sort of way, but at other times made the story feel a bit long and drawn out. Time passes effortlessly and characters age drastically from one moment to the next, which in some cases made them feel like someone I knew intimately and in some cases I felt as if I never had a chance to understand them. It was a bit frustrating at times though it did also add a lifelike quality to the whole thing.

I'm really interested to see what the show is like now, because it does not feel like a straightforward thing to adapt and I'm curious to see what angle they come at it, and I think I'm glad I read this first to be able to analyze the show in that way. We'll see!