In a ward in Tokyo there is a community building next to the elementary school. The two buildings used to be attached but now, to get to the community building you have to walk around back to the separate entrance. There are free adult classes, a farmers market some days and a large room that is a lending library. And if the young woman who services the main area cannot help with your request, she sends you to the reference librarian, a large, light/white skinned woman who sits behind a screen and at first seems disinclined to be much help. She has something in her hands that she punches repeatedly and a cookie can that advertises Honeydome, an American style cookie that is just a touch above ordinary cookies and very popular. She is Sayuri Komachi and she is the heart of What you are Looking for is in the Library, a novel about five people in key points their lives, where they are dissatisfied and rudderless: a 21 year old woman sales assistant at a department store; a 35 year old man who works as an accountant at a furniture manufacturer; a 40 year old woman who was once a women’s magazine editor but has been demoted to Information Resources; a 30 year old man who is unemployed and lives with his mother; and a 65 year old man who recently retired from a middle management job in a sales department.
This is an enchanting book and the audible version is a work of genius, using different narrators for the five people who, usually by chance, find their way to the library. The narrators each have a slight Japanese accent and are perfectly cast. Each of the central characters are surrounded by others who touch their lives, coworkers, old schoolmates, family, a girlfriend, the other people in a class, and so on. Michiko Toyama draws us to every single person and setting in this very visual book. We feel the culture of Japan, its pleasures and constraints, what it is like to live in/near a community in this large city that has the feel of a town within the city and the universal experiences of the different stages of our lives.
This is, in a sense, a coming of age book for people of a wide range of ages. When our protagonists meet with the librarian, each receives a list of the kind of books they requested and two additional items. Each experiences Mrs. Komachi differently and would describe her in a slightly different way: her voice, her manner – but all see her as large and very white in color. All wonder why she presents them with the two items. We wonder about this.
The novel can be described as interconnected short stories with his common theme, but various people we’ve met or heard of and places we’ve seen show up in each other’s stories. So they are individuals with their own paths, but they are a community too and as they brush up against one another a little piece stays. We smile in recognition. That’s the person that was in the computer class to learn how to build a website. Wait, is he the antique store owner?! And while we do not know if everyone has been to the library, we know that every person has a commonality of having something they care about or want that they have not fully shared or admitted to and that feels unreachable. Like us. Just like us.
This book is about changing how one can look at things differently and make very small changes to move toward what you really want. That fairly small adjustments can lead to more contentment or great happiness. It is sweet, compelling and not preachy or making genuinely hard things look like anyone can do them. These stories, entertaining, engrossing, beautifully crafted talk about how we might pull dreams down and in small ways move toward what is possible. And it is all plausible, told in a lovely way that makes you want to listen to the whole novel in one day and makes you want to go to Tokyo and have your audience with Sayuri Komachi, where you will learn how to meet your needs after several questions, a list of books you requested, two other items you did not ask for and your response to the sparklers that go off in your brain that make you try to cook one dish perfectly first or talk to someone who was interviewed for an article and think about possibilities.
They Called me Bookworm 