She is currently a writer-in-residence at Amherst College. Min Jin Lee is the author of two books: Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko. Do you feel like the story justified the page count? What parts would you have cut out, and what stories would you have preferred more of? At almost 500 pages, Pachinko is a rather hefty novel.How did shame affect the choices of the different characters? Shame is an underlying theme throughout the book.Sunja is repeatedly told that a woman’s life is pain and suffering? Do you feel the woman of the novel suffered more than the men? By the end of her life, do you think Sunja would pass this advice on to the next generation?.Of all the possible titles, why do you think Min Jin Lee chose Pachinko?.Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.” “You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination.

“We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly.” “Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.” From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters–strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis–survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history. Players purchase small silver balls that they drop or launch into the vertical pachinko machine. It can best be described as a combination of pinball and a slot machine. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. 512 pages, ISBN: 978-1455563920, Paperback Reviewed by Charles Newell Pachinko, a game of chance not skill, is a rather curious Japanese amusement. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son’s powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant–and that her lover is married–she refuses to be bought. In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. Audiobook Length: 18 hours and 16 minutes

Pachinko novel