Family Sagas with a Twist

In 2017, Korean-American author Min Jin Lee published Pachinko and Free Food for Millionaires, two fine family sagas.

Both novels are ideal to read in our current circumstances of social isolation during a pandemic when we have more time to read  and are longing for escape into a different world and a different era.

I was lucky enough to see Min Jin Lee talk about Pachinko and her first novel, Free Food for Millionaires, at the Sydney Writers Festival and again at the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta last year. She was as engaging, lively and observant in her speech as she is in her writing.

Pachinko is unique in that it is the first novel written for English-speaking readers about Korean migrants in Japan in the 20^th century. As such, it opens up a whole new world for most readers. Korean culture and everyday life, and the treatment of Koreans by the Japanese, was new and fascinating information for me.

This history is the backdrop for an engrossing family saga spanning several generations from 1910 to the 1980s. What I found outstanding about this book was the vivid portrayal of every character. Min Jin Lee introduces each character in a Dickensian way with details of their family background, personal characteristics and their connections with other characters. A whole society is written into being, so much so that I dreaded having to let go of this world when I finished the book. In her author talks, Min Jin Lee spoke about the extensive interviews she conducted with Koreans living in Japan and this level of research infuses the novel with authenticity and warmth.

Free Food for Millionaires is also a wonderful read but set in a more familiar narrative territory for English-speaking readers. It follows the fortunes of Korean-American Casey and her well-educated friends as they carve out a place for themselves in the global financial hub of New York and embark on relationships. Like Pachinko, the novel explores the experience of living in a different country from your family’s country of origin. Its focus is on second-generation Korean-Americans and how they negotiate the two worlds in which they live. It is a more modern story than Pachinko but has the same charm and myriad of authentic and sympathetic characters. 

Min Jin Lee took ten years or more to bring each of these books to publication. In my view, it’s well worth the wait for her third.