Mina's matchbox
Ogawa, Yōko, 1962-2024
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In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt's family. Tomoko's aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home--and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company--are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family's pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion--Tomoko's dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, and her dashing, charming uncle, who confidently sits as the family's patriarch. At the centre of the family is Tomoko's cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko's life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand--her uncle's mysterious absences, her great-aunt's experience of the Second World War, her aunt's misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina's Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time--and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.
Main title:
Mina's matchbox / Yoko Ogawa ; translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder.
Author:
Ogawa, Yōko, 1962-, authorSnyder, Stephen, 1957-, translator
Imprint:
London : Harvill Secker, 2024.©2024
Collation:
278 pages ; 22 cm
Notes:
"First published in Japan in 2005 as a newspaper serialization with the title 'Mina no Koshin' by Yomiuri Shimbun. First published in Japan in 2006 with the title 'Mina no Koshin' by Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc."--Title page verso.In English, translated from the Japanese.
ISBN:
978178730277897817873027789781787302761
Dewey class:
895.635
Language:
EnglishJapanese
Added title:
Subject:
BRN:
564466
More Information:
| Location | Collection | Call number | Status/Desc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beaumaris Library | Adult Fiction - General | OGAW | Available |