Library Reviews
THE BOOKSHOP WOMAN
An affirming autobiographical story about venturing beyond the usual circle of people while staying true to one’s quirks.
Nanako is the posterchild bookworm. During her student years, she kind of falls into her ideal part time job at her favourite bookstore. Then drifts along for the next decade or so. Unfortunately, as her story opens, her marriage is well past being on the skids. At thirty something she finds herself semi homeless and micromanaging her accommodation between net cafes and capsule hotels and the like.
Fortunately, she remains employed and eventually decides to address her mental health by using a dating app of sorts. It is actually a kind of Swiss army knife for social meet ups and these encounters form the bulk of the book content. She meets a gamut of people, including those interested in only one thing, and we are furnished with a little passport-style drawing of each person she meets. Like the weird, crusading, bookstore managing evangelist that she is, her profile is about recommending a book for her erstwhile date and her account steadily garners popularity.
PLACES
A very detailed, decade hopping memoir that begins in the 1920s. It reflects the unconventional life of a writer who would leave her young family, have multiple trysts, enter a convent and engage in social activism.
Born Setouchi Harumi, Setouchi Jakucho is a nationally famous author. Although now honoured, some of her literary output was polarising for the times with explicit content on female sexuality. In the late 1990s, she was responsible for a ten-volume translation of the Tale of Genji from 11th century Japanese into modern language capable of being read by students.
Places is a somewhat heavy read. It’s rooted in an everyday, rural world of the past and that is now unfamiliar. The narrative can ramble, and the flow of the current situation can be intruded on by events from back and forth in Setouchi’s memories. Names and families are important, and the multigenerational, large sibling relationships and marital extensions are a challenge to readers from the start.