This great lump of a book (600+ pages) was Min Jin Lee's first published novel and was the product of years and years spent learning the craft of writing. The author says in the front of the book that she wanted to be sure to hone her skills before putting a book together, and seems to have taken a very scientific approach to understanding form and construction.
You have to admire anyone who can work through a book of this size, however long they have been writing, and she neatly brings together Korean and American cultures and explores the different ways of thinking.
A Korean immigrant family living in New York is at the heart of the book and the eldest daughter, Casey, is testing the limits of what her father will allow as she reaches an age when she can either continue her studies or go out and get a job. Her family run a dry cleaning business and Casey's father is desperate for his two daughters to get a solid American education and go on to do greater things with their lives.
Casey has every opportunity to build a successful life and career for herself but seems determined to blow all her chances out of the water. She's a clever girl who has won a place at a good university, but she is so determined not to follow the path her father wants for her that she makes decisions that are only ever going to end badly. In fact, most of the characters in the book do the same thing. They have everything in place for a comfortable life and then each in turn goes and does something to bring everything they worked for crashing down to nothing.
In between all the personal dramas the book gives a good insight into the workings of the American banking business and the kind of personalities it takes to make money. The hard part is always holding onto the money once you've made it, and it becomes clear that great wealth comes with its own price.
It's a good book but by the time Min Jin Lee writes Pachinko in 2017, her writing style is much more fluid and the disasters seem a little more evenly spaced. It's well worth reading both of them.
Pachinko review Here
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