Church, sex and 'American Hagwon'
0 
0
I thought “Pachinko” was a fantastic book, particularly the first two-thirds. The narrative, the culture, the characters and, most importantly, the continuing sense of claustrophobia. I was there. Trapped. I was a young woman carrying a child, living among strangers, frightened for my future but clinging to hope. That is the power of Lee Min Jin’s writing. She takes you there. She makes you feel it. She reminds you not only what it is to be human, but also what it is to be someone else — which is, when you think about it, a rather extraordinary thing for a book to achieve. You sit in a comfortable chair, a cup of coffee somewhere nearby, and voluntarily spend several hundred pages experiencing the suffering of people who lived in circumstances you will never fully understand. You emerge feeling that you’ve learned something about the human condition. Perhaps you have. Perhaps you’ve just enjoyed the experience of feeling that you have. That also comes across in the way Lee carries herself in interviews. The empathy. The intelligence. The compassion for others. I have shown her conver
