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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author= Justin Huggler
|title=The Return Home
|rating= 3
|genre= General Fiction
|summary= The uniqueness of a boyhood spent growing up in Jersey is conveyed in some memorable imagery in this novel, intersecting the German wartime occupation of the island, the Afghan resistance to the Russians in the 1980s and present day conflict in Syria. Ben, now working internationally for a human rights advocacy organisation, flits back and forth between reflections on his boyhood and his adult self. He is both attempting to solve the mystery of what became of his uncle Jack, who had a brief but lasting impact on him as a child, and trying to decide how to save his disintegrating marriage. For the first few chapters I enjoyed these time shifts back and forth, advancing with Ben in understanding the meaning of events which as an eight year old he could only partly grasp. Ben also develops a deepening appreciation of the choices he has made in life, such as his choice of career, by examining the influences on his childhood self.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722028</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anita Shreve
|summary= I have often said that much of what I know of the world, its geography, history and politics, I have learned from reading story books. Because I learn this way, I do wonder about people who profess not to read fiction. I wonder how much of the truth of how the world really is passes them by as a result. In the light of 2016 in the UK and the USA, I wonder if this is a concern to be added to all of the others about cuts to arts funding and arts learning and the absolute necessity of having public libraries where children can start to choose for themselves at the earliest age, which stories to read, uncensored by the views of those who might think they know better. I say all this because Pachinko is yet one more of those books that did not just make me think differently about what I thought I knew, but actually opened up to me a world that I knew nothing about: the world of the ethnic Korean in Japan.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786691353</amazonuk>
}}
