📚 After a bad breakup with her boyfriend, who married another girl, Takako was total wreck a d jobless. She accepted her uncle's invitation to stay rent-free in a room above the store. She isn't a reader, and at first felt suffocated sleeping with piles of books around her room. But little by little, she regained calmness, with the help of her caring uncle (whom she felt more connected with), and of course, the healing power of books. She even gets to know a bookish young man at her favorite coffee shop.
📚 If only that story was elaborated more, this book would be my favorite. But no, after she's feeling better, Takako decided to look for new job, and it means that she must move out of Morisaki Bookstore. Then the story began to shift to a totally different direction.
📚 Satoru leaves alone at the bookstore after his wife Momoko left him five years ago. She left just like that one day without ever contact him, and so he lost hope of ever seeing her again. Then one day, several months after Takako left, Momoko returned. She just came without explanation, as if she never left. Satoru asked Takako's help to solve the mystery around her uncle and aunt's past dark secrets.
📚 This second part of the story didn't even centered in the bookstore. The revelation and the secret itself took place at another village. Why titled a book "Days at The Morisaki Bookstore" if half the story wasn't connected to either the bookstore or books at all? And I hate Momoko's character - a coward with fake personality and a selfish woman. She disappeared for five years, and then suddenly came back like nothing happen! Are we readers supposed to sympathize with her and her struggles? No! Her conducts are inexcusable. I felt really sorry for Satoru, he didn't deserve Momoko - but then, love is often blind, so...
📚 In short, this story is too disintegrated and quirky for my taste. The first part is quite lovely, I loved Satoru and the bookstore, but hated everything in the second part.
Rating: ⭐⭐1/2
I read this for:
Japanese Literature Challenge 17
I read this earlier in the month and enjoyed it, though it was quickly surpassed by a couple of other bits of Japanese literature I read -- "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" and "What You are Looking for is in the Library".
ReplyDeleteI liked the first half of this book, when she's working at the bookshop, but I really didn't enjoy the second half of it. So that made me like this one less overall, too. I wish the whole book had focused on the bookshop.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the bookshop part more but I didn't hate the rest of it. I really want to go there now, too!
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