The first line: 'œHistory has failed us, but no matter.' What follows is this masterpiece Lee has written, a captivating family drama that is also a sweeping epic spanning the unknown (to most of us) history of the two countries for most of the twentieth century. The writing is remarkable'”the tone never wavers, the prose is flinty and clear. It also makes their era’s history accessible to American readers in new and marvelous ways. It introduced me to their struggles in ways they would never have'”and yet, let me be clear, this novel does much more than to break an intergenerational silence. My own family is from one of these small fishing islands off the coast of Korea, and this novel’s beginning was like getting to spy on my grandparents’ early lives. Reading Pachinko was, in many ways, personal to me, at first.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |