Hirondelle's Reviews > What You Are Looking For Is in the Library

If this book was food, this would be the (fictional) honey dome cookies, which are a theme: pretty, perfectly looking in Japanese style, soft goo-ey centre, and sweet. Not everyday fare. But I expect I would find the fictional cookies as delicious as the characters do, and the book was delicious. Very charming - but it is didactic, and that is a bug for me even if I think the things it is didactic about are true (or true as far as one can measure).

There is a Japanese book that has been published in translation recently: cosy and with a Japanese theme; the plot is a string of interconnected novellas (maybe these were published in magazines beforehand?), some supernatural hints, and this fits that concept. Like Before the Coffee Gets Cold, and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (and some cat one I am eyeing), but of these three I have read, this was my favourite and I would argue objectively the strongest.  The characters have depth, and they are all so nice, in very different ways. The ties between the characters from story to story are well done, there is a diversity to the characters and their problems that is fresh, and the final story answers some questions, elegantly giving some closure (incidentally, I expect there might be no sequels—not that it is closed, but it seems intentional). It's a very very nice book.

But it is intentionally uplifting, and perhaps I am a cynic, but it felt a a little bit intentionally didactic about the concept of fitting into a society,  collectivism maybe, where the characters become happier and more satisfied if they change themselves a bit or change their expectations, but in all in relation to society as a whole. I expect it is very Japanese in that. I think a lot of its points are universal and good ideas for all societies and all humans, valuing connections, doing things, being curious, respecting oneself and others, but some of what is taken for granted (small side spoiler, the assistant librarian taking on instead a janitor job and not objecting because it was expected, unless somebody helped her) well, I got a non-Japanese perspective on it.

Incidentally, I thought there was a lot of symbolism in the details, like honey, bees, a hive, produced by a group, or the felt mascots, where pricks and outside pressure form a ball of wool into something with a shape or purpose - but it was done well, I only noticed it halfway through!