What You Are Looking For Is In The Library is a novel by best-selling Japanese author, Michiko Aoyama. It is translated from Japanese by Alison Watts. Each of the five chapters focuses on a resident of Tokyo who has some dissatisfaction with their life. Through various means, they find themselves at the Hatori Community House, visiting its library. Nozomi Morinaga, the young trainee librarian points them in the direction of the librarian.

Despite her forbidding demeanour, when Sayuri Komachi asks “What are you looking for?” they feel like gently enfolding words. She is a large lady who, between making recommendations for books, often sits behind her counter pulling wool and needle from her Kuremiyado Honeydome soft cookie box to indulge in the calming pastime of felting, creating mascots she gives away with those enigmatic recommendations: “This one’s for you. Please take it. It’s a bonus gift with the book.”

At twenty-one, Tomoka Fujiki is unhappy with her achievements and lack of ambition: advancement in the women’s wear section of the Eden department store doesn’t exactly appeal. Kiriyama, her colleague in the ZAZ eyewear department, whom she later learns gave up an enviable career with a publisher, suggests updating her IT skills at the Hatori CH.

Among several IT manuals, Sayuri’s puzzling pick for Tomoka is a popular classic children’s book, “Guri and Gura”, from which everyone she meets draws a different message. A change in perspective means that Tomoka comes to see her older, experienced part-time colleague in a different light, while Kiriyama’s attitude, “‘In a world where you don’t know what will happen next, I just do what I can right now” has merit.

An accountant for Kishimoto, a furniture business, thirty-five-year-old Ryo Urase wonders if he will ever realise his dream of owning an antique store. It was his happy place as a teen, but while his younger girlfriend runs a successful online business selling sea glass jewellery, Ryo can’t see himself saving enough to start up, let alone succeed. Among business start-up guides, Sayuri also suggests for Ryo “How Do Worms Work” which, in a roundabout way, leads him to considering the possibility of parallel careers, with unexpected support from his girlfriend.

After thirteen successful years with magazine publisher Banyusha as editor for their young women’s magazine, Mila, thirty-eight-year-old Natsumi Sakitani is disappointed to be relegated to Information Resources when she returns from maternity leave. Her birthing of a serial novel by the famous Mizue Kanata, later published as a book, apparently counts for little. At forty, she feels she is finding little satisfaction with either motherhood or her career.

Sayuri tells her: “Life is one revelation after another. Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening. Ultimately it’s all for the best that many things don’t turn out the way we hoped” and recommends a novel “Door To The Moon”. Eventually, Natsumi realises she has been seeing herself as a victim. A suggestion from Kiriyama, a former colleague, finds her in a very satisfactory new career.

Although Hiroya Suda went to design school with the intention of realising his dream to be a famous graphic artist, at thirty, he is still unemployed and living at home with his mother. When he finds himself in the library at Hatori CH during a shopping chore, the attractive young assistant librarian points him to Sayuri as the source of a cute Manga mascot. The frustrated artist draws inspiration from her recommendation, “Evolution- a visual record”, and begins drawing again. Regular visits to the library result in paid work and exposure of his talent.

Masao Gonno has retired after forty-two years with Kuremiyado, and “now that I no longer work for a company I am no longer acknowledged by society at large.” He realises he was mistaken in thinking that he had a wide personal network when it was all business associates, and he has a worrying lack of hobbies.

The man who gives him a Go lesson warns him about getting underfoot with his wife, Yoriko, who teaches IT at Hatori CH. Sayuri recommends a book of poetry, “Genge and Frogs” that surprisingly helps him reconnect with his somewhat estranged daughter, and he begins to see the remainder of his life from a different perspective.

What initially seem like separate vignettes begin to connect when characters start appearing in each other’s stories, which allows further resolution and provides some back story. Aoyama gives her characters wise words and insightful observations, and her love of, and respect for, books and libraries is apparent at every turn, as “People working in the book industry are not the only ones who make the publishing world go round; most of all it depends on the readers. Books belong to everybody: the creators, the sellers and the readers. That’s what society is all about” and “Readers make their own personal connections to words, irrespective of the writer’s intentions, and each reader gains something unique” illustrate. Utterly delightful!
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK Transworld.

“How uncanny the way what one reads can sometimes synchronise with reality.”

A book about books and a librarian who recommends the right one at the right time is always going to be a must read for me. I’ve experienced bookish transformative magic and have long suspected some librarians are particularly gifted in wielding it.

This book introduces you to five people who are at a crossroads in their life. Whether they’re unsatisfied with their job, wanting to follow a dream or are searching for purpose, they all find their way to the librarian.

‘What are you looking for?’

After a short conversation with Sayuri Komachi, the librarian, she produces a list of books on the subject they have requested but invariably also sneaks in a surprise title that appears entirely irrelevant. It is this title that leads the reader on a journey of self discovery, while trying to decipher the meaning of the librarian’s bonus gift.

The comparisons between this book and Before the Coffee Gets Cold made sense early on. Each chapter focuses on a specific individual, although as you make your way through the book you discover connections between characters and their backstories. One of my favourite things about this book was searching for the ways in which the seemingly unconnected stories interwove.

One description, which initially niggled at me, became something that impacted my enjoyment of the book. Every character, upon seeing the librarian for the first time, noted their shock at her appearance. She’s described as “huge”, “really huge”, “large” (multiple times), “very large” (more than once) and “humungous”. She has “plump fingers”. Characters are surprised she can move quickly and that she is capable of the fine work of felting.

The paleness of her skin was also consistently commented one; it reminded one character of a “white glutinous rice cake”.

Comparisons are made between her and a polar bear, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, Disney’s Baymax and Genma Saotome from Ranma ½. While I’m usually up for any Ghostbusters reference, all of the comparisons felt disparaging rather than descriptive.

I haven’t been able to find a better word to describe my experience of this book as a whole than ‘soft’. It’s easy to read. The characters aren’t difficult to get to know and you don’t need to think deeply to follow the story. It’s a nice, feel-good read and there are sentences that leave you feeling warm and squishy. Ultimately, though, while I will remember how it made me feel, I don’t think any of the individual stories are going to linger with me long term.

“Everybody should have their own story.”

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, for the opportunity to read this book. I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars.