Recent Reading: What You’re Looking for is in the Library

So, after various people here recommended What You’re Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama as a nice, peaceful novel, I added it to my TBR pile. And, once the power was back on so I could read ebooks without worrying about power — I’ve ordered a solar charger now, by the way — anyway, this seemed like a good choice. And it was. It was also a thoroughly interesting … story. Series of stories.

If you look closely, you’ll see “A Novel” in small print below the title. See that? That generally (almost always) is used to signal This is a Literary Novel. Well, in this case, I would call that false advertising. This isn’t literary, and it’s not a novel. It’s not a novel in two different ways:

A) It’s short. The total length is about a long novella — about 200 pages or so.

B) It’s not a single story. It’s a series of … not short stories … it’s a series of five long vignettes.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it.

A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. 

There are five vignettes, not four. One got left out of the description above: an artistic geek finds the confidence to move forward. Something like that.

These vignettes feature the most utterly ordinary people you can imagine. I don’t think that’s coincidence. I think the author means: Everyone is living their own story. No one is ordinary.

In each case, the protagonist of the vignette is not happy. They are each stuck in their lives and don’t see how to move forward. Each person visits the library, the librarian recommends a book that for some reason turns out to help them get their lives in order, and they do get their lives in order and move on, much more happily. There’s no fantasy element, except possibly the librarian, who does not seem like a totally normal person. The setting is as ordinary as the protagonists, though of course this is set in Tokyo, so that somewhat removes the setting from the ordinary world for American readers. Not very much, though.

Regardless, this book is is interesting in all kinds of ways — it raises questions about what we mean by a novel, what we mean by a story, what we mean by totally normal, ordinary person.

Also, this story — series of linked vignettes — also raises questions about simplicity of theme, simplicity of message, simplicity of language, and how keeping all that simple does or does not create depth. This is because the language of the vignettes is simple, plain language, and the lessons learned be each protagonist are simple, plain lessons. I don’t mean overly simplistic. I do mean simple.

Not only is the language simple, but in most cases, the books recommended by the librarian are children’s books. I don’t think that’s coincidence. I think it’s part of what the author is doing to create depth from simplicity. This isn’t the case in every vignette; one of the books is about evolutionary theory, which of course I rather liked, But it’s common.

This is why I say this work is not literary. “Literary” is hard to categorize, but “literary fiction” basically means ordinary protagonist; ordinary setting; slice of life; ornate, poetic, or metaphorical language; a sense of ennui, negativity, nihilism, or other negative tone and theme. That last isn’t universal, just (very) typical. This story features the ordinary protagonists, ordinary settings, and slice of life, but the language is, as I say, very simple, the tone positive, and the themes uplifting. Therefore, to me, this book doesn’t seem especially literary and also definitely doesn’t seem like a novel.

However, whatever this book is, I turned out to be in the mood for something like it. If you try it, I hope you’ll find it interesting, and that it will lift your mood.