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Title: What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
Author: Michiko Aoyama
Illustrator: Rohan Eason
Translator: Alison Watts
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Bibliophiles, Translation, Feel Good
Audience: Adult
My Review:
This was just the sort of soothing, hopeful book I needed right now. In a series of connected stories, the author explores different scenarios most of us can relate to. The young woman fresh out of college who feels stuck. The woman with an established career who finds herself struggling to find her place after maternity leave. The retiree who’s lost his sense of identity now that he’s left the company where he worked for decades. There are others but they all share a sense of lost purpose or purpose-never-found.
With the help of an awe-inspiring librarian, they each find a different book that helps them shift their perspective. These aren’t self-help books or anything obvious like that. One person sparks to a children’s picture book. These books in roundabout ways help the characters stop focusing so much on what they don’t have or what they don’t know and start to seek out a logical next step. These are not big, life-changing steps; they’re just a start. But they’re also just enough to give each character hope that maybe he or she can find a path to a fulfilling life and/or career. As one character says, “In a world where you don’t know what will happen next, I just do what I can right now.”
I thought that was going to be the main premise of the book and that was enough to make me happy. But then the stories start to just barely overlap and suddenly the book is more about society and the small things we can do to help each other along our paths. I loved it.
I really liked that there weren’t any stories that were focused on romantic love and finding a partner. Each of these people are looking for personal fulfillment. There are relationships in the story but that’s not what any character is truly looking for.
The translation by Alison Watts flowed naturally and the illustrations by Rohan Easton were a nice addition. They rendered well on my Kindle Paperwhite.
If you’re feeling stuck yourself, or just need a gentle story about a community of people slowly finding a stronger sense of purpose, I highly recommend this book.
Synopsis from GoodReads:
For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader’s life.
What are you looking for?
This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.
Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.
With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.
Similar Books:
If you liked What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, you might also like my reviews of
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
- The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson
Reading Challenge:
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