The Japanese bestseller: a tale of love, new beginnings, and the comfort that can be found between the pages of a good book.
When twenty-five-year-old Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle Satoru's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above his shop. Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, the Morisaki Bookshop is a booklover's paradise.
On a quiet corner in an old wooden building, the shop is filled with hundreds of second-hand books. It is Satoru's pride and joy, and he has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife left him five years earlier. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the shop.
By Lília
With the recent publication of More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, I wanted to go back and read the first title about this Japanese bookshop and see what all the excitement is about.
And it was a discovery.
This is such a gentle read!
After Takako learns from her boyfriend he has a fiancée and is getting married, she falls into a deep depression that doesn’t seem to lift—until her uncle, a second-hand bookshop owner, invites her to live at the shop rent-free. She only needs to help a little at the store.
At first, Takako is reluctant, but with time she starts getting involved in the store, with the customers and, most surprisingly, with the books. She discovers a passion for reading she didn’t know she had and starts reading progressively more, returning to life one page at a time.
Her relationship with her uncle Satoru also evolves, and Takako begins to understand her life and the direction she’d like it to take.
While I was at first a bit exasperated with Takako and her reaction to her boyfriend’s callousness, I came to understand her deep feelings and her difficulty expressing them. Her development is subtle but true, and it reminded me that we all deal with our problems in different ways.
This is a story about deep love: for your person, your family, your business, and mostly, books. It treats serious themes such as depression, abandonment and illness in a very gentle manner without becoming a depressing story.
If you’re looking for a slow but real-life snapshot read, this might be for you.
4 out of 5 stars
