Élisa Shua Dusapin

It is summer in Tokyo. Claire finds herself dividing her time between tutoring twelve-year-old Mieko, in an apartment in an abandoned hotel, and lying on the floor at her grandparents: daydreaming, playing Tetris and listening to the sounds from the street above. The heat rises; the days slip by.

The plan is for Claire to visit Korea with her grandparents. They fled the civil war there over fifty years ago, along with thousands of others, and haven’t been back since. When they first arrived in Japan, they opened Shiny, a pachinko parlour. Shiny is still open, drawing people in with its bright, flashing lights and promises of good fortune. And as Mieko and Claire gradually bond, a tender relationship growing, Mieko’s determination to visit the pachinko parlour builds.

The Pachinko Parlour is a nuanced and beguiling exploration of identity and otherness, unspoken histories, and the loneliness you can feel amongst family. Crisp and enigmatic, Shua Dusapin’s writing glows with intelligence.

The Pachinko Parlour

milly

"I like when it's foggy, when you can't see into the distance, when there's no horizon. It gives me a feeling of having time. That it's all right not to see, not to be aware of what's in my path"

"We ought to shed our skins, like animals. The older we got, the more transparent our skin would become. In the end you'd be able to see all our insides through it. Veins, bones, feelings, everything. Our skin would be like a mirror too, people would be able to see themselves in it. Eventually we'd become completely transparent, and when that happened, we'd give our last breath to our child."

"No. We'd just get lighter and lighter, that's all."

"All that lingers is an echo. A clamour of languages merging gradually to become one."

The Pachinko Parlour quotes

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