RaveThe MillionsTo what extent can Japan, a society that despises Koreans, ever be these characters’ home? To what extent is Noa, who wants only to be educated and virtuous like Isak, the man who raised him, still Hansu’s son? What does it mean to be connected to another person? To a nation? Lee offers us no simple answers. But we don’t read novels for simple answers, do we? We read novels to get a glimpse of the world through someone else’s eyes. Lee does that for us here, and she does it while maintaining a light touch. Lee is not an author interested in dazzling you with her prose or reinventing the novel form (Pachinko’s structure is most like that of 19th-century British novels), preferring instead to keep her story and characters front and center. But somehow, she’s there on every page, present but invisible.
