A young Franco-Korean woman spends a summer in Tokyo tutoring a Japanese girl named Mieko in French while staying with her aging Korean grandparents, who fled to Japan during the Korean War and never returned, and repeatedly puts off a planned visit to the pachinko parlour they run.
Books mentioned in The Pachinko Parlour (2)
Heidi by Johanna Spyri: “'Have you read Heidi?' she asks... 'Johanna Spyri suffered from depression... She couldn't write the book until after she'd brought up her children'”
Ernest & Célestine by Gabrielle Vincent: “when I did start reading by myself I'd lost interest in Ernest and Célestine”