First let me clearly state that I love this book. I love the way the sory progresses and how the characters are written. Well, untill the last part of the book.
I don’t understand what the point of Etsuko and Hana is in this story. Having spent so much time with so many people struggling to survive, Etsuko is a stark contrast with her first world “problems”. I don’t mind authors writing about bad people or people doing bad things, but what bothers me is the author trivializing this or trying to rationalize. Etsuko did something awful which altered her daughter’s life and eventually let to her demise, yet the author tries hard to sympathize with her. When in stark contrast to the other characters she makes excuses for herself, isn’t really sorry and does not repent, even though what she did and what it led to was far worse than what they did.
The only claims she has towards being a good person is that 1) she supposedly does not discriminate against Koreans, 2) she buys her mother-in-law designer clothes and 3) she is a good step-mother to Solomon. To which my reply is 1) she only considered Mozasu as a partner when she became an outcast herself, there is no indication she would have had the same opinions if she was still welcomed in the Japenese community, and even as an outcast she considered Mozasu beneath her family 2) We have been told multiple times that Sunja does not care about her appearance, so why would she care about designer clothes? 3) She was still a horrible mother to her children, and her justifications for how she did her best as a mother, why she cheated on her husband in their home (!!) and why she wouldn’t cheat on Mozasu didn’t make any sense and in fact made me dislike her even more.
Then there was Hana; even though I was more sympathetic towards her; I don’t understand the point of her existence in this story. I was more interested in Phoebe and I would have liked to delve more into how two Koreans both from outside Korea have opposing views on Japan and the pachinko business. Instead Phoebe serves as a contrast for Hana who’s supposedly so understanding, completely glossing over the fact that his unhealthy devotion to her is the consequence of her grooming him, her stepbrother, to have a sexual relationship with her when he was 15.
It feels like all the screen time and sympathy are taken from everyone else and given to Etsuko and Hana; which is puzzling, when they are so terrible, unlikeable and completely pointless. It really feels like someone other than Lee Min Jin wrote these awful characters.
by SPSSRTorture
1 Comment
The book isn’t trying to make moral judgments, that’s the point. People live their lives without thinking *am I being a good person with this?* because life is too complicated for that. Most of the characters make bad choices at some point, one of the main characters is literally a Yakuza, why is Etsuko meant to go to hell or something?
Looking for every character to be a “good person” is just trying to read this novel as some sort of YA, which it isn’t. The character most set up to be a “good person” and who did everything by the book was >!Noa, and he killed himself, dude. Sunja spends like 2 pages even commenting maybe the mistake was raising him to think that it was as simple as “good things happen to good people” in her own words.!< If you also think that people who have obvious trauma and mental health issues (both Etsuko and Hana) deserve no sympathy, you like double missed the point.
You’re also glossing over the fact that the actual suffering for Etsuko’s children came from the conservative Japanese society around them – that’s sort of a major theme in the novel. People >!cheat and get divorced!< all the time in most societies and yet they don’t generally get ostracized like that, their entire family, right?