Pachinko opens in Yeongdo, Korea, a small fishing village off the coast of Busan. His eyes have been opened I suppose, and now he can’t unsee it. His learning curve has been steeper than mine, but I find myself smiling with pride every time I overhear him in a meeting, explaining why they need captions or pulling up friends on ableist jokes. He is the first to claim that he knew little of chronic illness, mobility aids and hospital stays before he met me. I didn't necessarily fall sick overnight, but I was given multiple incurable diagnoses that meant I had to rearrange almost everything in my life, and by extension, my partner did too. And, in the last five years, my entire perspective on disability has changed because I became disabled. They provide context for the story on the page, and impact what we take from a book - it’s the reason reading is subjective. When we read, we bring with us all the books we have previously read, all of the lives we have lived, the places we have been. What struck me on initial reading was the depth that illness and disability impacted this one family, and yet I had never read a review that referenced it? It is a moving story spanning decades of Korean people living and working in Japan over the course of the 20th century. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee has reemerged as a fan favourite, devotees of the ‘you must read before watch’ clan are scampering to finish this intergenerational family saga before tuning into the Apple TV adaption that went live last month.
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