Mina's Matchbox: A Novel

by Yoko Ogawa Narrated by Nanako Mizhushima

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The compelling new novel from National Book Award finalist Yoko Ogawa is the story of a young girl's curiosity and courage, an unconventional family, and their pygmy hippo.

From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.

“Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina's Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.” -Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

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 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.¿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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 06/03/2024

In Ogawa’s captivating latest (after The Memory Police), a Japanese woman looks back 30 years to 1972, the year she stayed with her aunt’s family in the coastal town of Ashiya, and reflects on the secrets she uncovered there. Tomoko is 12 when she leaves her home in Tokyo while her widowed mother attends a course for dressmaking. In Ashiya, she’s dazzled by her handsome half-German, half-Japanese uncle, the owner of a soft drink company, who drives her from the train station to his magnificent house, where she’s charmed by her asthmatic cousin Mina, who collects matchboxes and writes stories based on their cover designs. Even more impressive than the family’s mansion is the pygmy hippopotamus they keep as a pet. Tomoko and Mina bond over the books Tomoko borrows for them at the local library and they share a devotion to the hippo, on whose back Mina rides to school. But Tomoko’s joy and wonder are tempered by Mina’s chronic health problems and by the discoveries she makes about her aunt’s secret drinking habit and where her uncle disappears to for days at a time. The revelations are described with cool and subtle precision, and Ogawa pulls off the rare feat of making childhood memories both credible and provocative. Readers will be hypnotized. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

Praise for Mina's Matchbox

A Most Anticipated Book of the Summer from The Atlantic, TIME, Boston Globe, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly

“The reader is immersed in [Tomoko’s] ardent love for her fragile cousin, and comes to appreciate how history seeps into every life, even the most sheltered ones.”
—The Atlantic

“A transfixing coming of age tale.”
—TIME

“Capturing a Japanese girl’s adolescence in the early 1970s, this hypnotic book shimmers with eccentric enigmas.”
—Boston Globe

“Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.”
—Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

“It’s the kind of transformative trip that makes for a powerful read at any time of year, but feels especially appropriate when you’re craving a (literary) summer sojourn.”
—Bustle

“Focusing on characters of an age when the world seems full of wonder and possibility, this engaging bildungsroman explores the friendship and mutual curiosity between two extraordinary young people… Facing complicated themes with deceptively simple language, she pulls off a neat trick here, painting everything in miniature and often in hindsight without losing the immediacy of Tomoko’s experiences. A charming yet guileless exploration of childhood’s ephemeral pleasures and reflexive poignancy.”
—Kirkus, starred review

“Captivating…Ogawa pulls off the rare feat of making childhood memories both credible and provocative. Readers will be hypnotized.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In language as clean and delicate as a whisper, the cousins’ year of shared adventures frays as tragedies chip away at the public façade of the family’s private realities…Ogawa writes with exquisite artistry about the complications of a close-knit household whose members are quietly protective of its wounding secrets, as seen through the eyes of a young girl; the novel is beautifully translated by Snyder.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“[12-year-old] Tomoko proves to be a prodigiously astute observer, discovering truths behind closed doors…Remarkable is the timing of Snyder’s impressively seamless translation. Ogawa already brilliantly, deftly broadens her not-quite-quotidian family saga with pivotal world events.”
—Booklist, starred review

Library Journal

★ 07/01/2024

In 1972, the widowed mother of twelve-year-old Tomoko sends her to live with wealthy relatives in Ashiya for a year while she furthers her education in Tokyo. The family welcomes Tomoko, who bonds with her fragile cousin Mina, 11, whose needs drive the household's daily activities. Tomoko is an observant innocent—curious and charmed by Mina's collection of matchboxes and the stories tucked inside; by her uncle's frequent absences; by Mina's pygmy hippo whom she rides to school; by Great Grandmother Rosa, a Holocaust survivor; by Rosa's best friend, Yoneda-san, who has run the household for more than 50 years; by her removed aunt, an obsessive proofreader; and by the emotional distance between Mina's absent brother and his father. In language as clean and delicate as a whisper, the cousins' year of shared adventures frays as tragedies chip away at the public façade of the family's private realities. VERDICT Ogawa (The Memory Police), an award-winning novelist both in her native Japan and in the United States, writes with exquisite artistry about the complications of a close-knit household whose members are quietly protective of its wounding secrets, as seen through the eyes of a young girl; the novel is beautifully translated by Snyder.—Beth E. Andersen

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160498300
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/13/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged