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Mina's matchbox  Cover Image Book Book

Mina's matchbox / Yoko Ogawa ; translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder.

Ogawa, Yōko, 1962- (author.). Snyder, Stephen, 1957- (translator.).

Summary:

"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 grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family's patriarch. At the center 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, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel's end.? Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand-her uncle's mysterious absences, her German grandmother's experience of WWII, and 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"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9780593316085
  • ISBN: 0593316088
  • Physical Description: 280 pages ; 22 cm
  • Publisher: New York : Pantheon Books, [2024]

Content descriptions

General Note:
"First appeared in Japan in 2005 as a newspaper serialization with the title "Mina no Koshin" by Yomiuri Shimbun. Originally published in Japan in 2006 with the title "Mina no Koshin" by Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc." -- Title page verso.
Subject: Families > Fiction.
Cousins > Fiction.
Friendship > Fiction.
Social classes > Fiction.
Japan > Fiction.
Genre: Psychological fiction.
Historical fiction.
Novels.

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at Skagit Evergreen Libraries. (Show)
  • 1 of 1 copy available at Upper Skagit Library District. (Show)
  • 1 of 1 copy available at Upper Skagit Library.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Upper Skagit Library OGA 1018784 New Adult Fiction Available -


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