The Pachinko Parlour by Elisa Shua Dusapin Review

Claire is in Tokyo for the summer to be with her aging Korean grandparents who run a pachinko parlour. But, thinking she’ll have too much time on her hands, she accepts a part-time gig tutoring Mieko, a lonely 10 year old, in French language. And that’s both the premise and the “story”... Hmm.

I didn’t totally dislike Elisa Shua Dusapin’s second novel The Pachinko Parlour because there is a good flow to her prose - it’s an easy read and you get a good idea of everyday Japanese life, particularly from a gaijin’s perspective - but I also didn’t like it much either. Very little happens and, despite not providing a story, Dusapin hasn’t offered up anything else in its place, ie. thought-provoking messages/commentary or anything resembling cogent ideas on Claire’s/any other character’s situation.

I get the impression that the novel is, rather loftily, about “identity”. Claire is a twentysomething French/Korean living in Switzerland (hey, just like the author - what an imaginative stretch!) and visiting Japan - displacement, not fitting into any one culture for reasons… ok. And…? Similarly, her grandparents are Korean, displaced by the Korean War, and don’t feel like they’ve been fully accepted by Japanese society despite having lived in the country for decades.

So what is Dusapin trying to say here? I really don’t know. I’d also be making things up if I said the pachinko parlour itself is a metaphor for something - that is, life is a game of chance or something trite - and I don’t think it’s meant to be anything more than a realistic profession for her grandpa to have. I didn’t know this but a number of pachinko parlours are run by Koreans as they’re tax exempt in Japan.

I’m equally lost at sea when it comes to the other half of the novel. Mieko is a lonely kid with a distant mother who’s clearly still deeply hurt by her husband abandoning his family. I really don’t get what we’re meant to take away from these two besides the weird feature of the novel which is filled with female characters, none of whom seem to like each other very much and have the darndest time being close to one another… for reasons?

Personally speaking, I can relate to some of what Dusapin’s driving at - I’m half-English and half-Japanese and I’ve felt that strangeness that comes with being an outsider in as homogenous a culture as Japan’s, exacerbated by the language barrier between relatives - but beyond simply expressing that feeling, I don’t know what else this novel is trying to do. It’s certainly not about telling a compelling narrative or presenting remarkable characters!

It’s fairly well-written and a quick read but nothing much about The Pachinko Parlour is especially memorable or impressive - a very weak and empty novel I wouldn’t recommend to anyone.