Five people vaguely dissatisfied with their lives make their way to the library at the community house where they encounter the librarian, Mrs. Komachi. Her book recommendations and bonus gift (one of Mrs. Komachi’s needle felting creations) inspire each of the five to explore new opportunities and try new activities to add more meaning to their lives. The audio version uses five different narrators for the five people whose stories are told, and I enjoyed the variety of voices. This book will leave many readers eager to explore the treasures in their local libraries to find inspiration for their own lives. ( )

I was on the fence about reading this because it seemed very earnest and sentimental. But I am glad I did. It is sentimental, and also tender, a little sad, but overall full of joy. And what’s so wrong with sentimentality, really? I found myself quite enjoying the book for its predictability. Each story has the same structure, which allows the nuances of character and setting to really stand out. ( )

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library tells the stories of five different people: Tomoka, a young sales clerk dissatisfied with her job & life; Ryo, a middle-aged salary man frustrated by his co-workers & by his dream to own an antique shop; Natsumi, a middle-aged new mother overwhelmed by motherhood & its effect on her career; Hiroya, an unemployed, thirty-year-old aspiring artist whose career never got off the ground; and Masao, a bored retiree who epitomizes the concept of weaponized incompetence. All five of these individuals find themselves in their local community library with book recommendations & miniature gifts from the librarian which end up changing their attitudes & their life paths for the better—almost as if by magic! Of course, all five of their stories are interwoven as the narrative unfolds.

Overall, this book is an engaging read. Most of the characters are sympathetic, and their stories are compelling without being too over-the-top or melodramatic. I wouldn’t mind reading this again and I would recommend it to almost everyone.

There are a few pesky flaws that keep this from being a stellar, five star novel. As with a lot of Japanese lit, the tone is occasionally preachy & condescending. It reminds me of those annoying ‘The More You Know…” TV spots in which dimwitted celebrities talk down to their audience in patronizing tones of voice telling them how they should live and what they should think. I always want to scream: you’re a high school dropout actor who does nothing but repeat lines other people have written for you, what makes you feel qualified to boss me around! This book assumes that unpleasant aura of sermonizing quite frequently.

Another major problem is the fact that—with several characters—the author normalizes male incompetence & laziness. Natsumi’s husband is no help to her—at all, despite empty promises to be a fully equal co-parent prior to the birth of their child. His job automatically takes precedence over her career; he casually takes a night off to go drinking after work or goes off on a weekend business trip with no consideration for his wife’s schedule or responsibilities; he always expects her to do all of the childcare, all of the household chores, all of the cooking, etc. in addition to her full-time job, while his full-time job is too much of an overwhelming responsibility for him to be able to do anything else…poor baby! Even at the end of her story & Natsumi’s husband ‘valiantly’ agrees to begin dropping their daughter off at daycare, she has to sit down and give him detailed instructions on how to do it—including a tutorial on how to wash the baby’s futon cover. Seriously? Natsumi was assumed to be capable of figuring out parenthood on her own, but her husband is applauded for needing a lengthy tutorial on how to wash & use bedding? The husband even says at one point that he knew she was drowning in chores and responsibilities, but didn’t know how to help her until she told him exactly what to do and how to do it…Really? A forty year old man can’t autonomously figure out that meals need to be cooked, laundry needs to be washed, or rooms need to be cleaned? God save us all from such stupidity and uselessness! Yet the author concludes that the husband is ultimately a hero because of his willingness to parent his own child & wash a blanket (as long as his wife takes the time to write a detailed instruction manual for him!). All I have to say is, if your husband can’t and won’t figure out how to feed himself or his child, you need to dump the dead weight instanter and make life a lot easier for yourself.

Even worse is the story of the retired salesman, Masao. He worked for 42 years as a sales manager for a confectionery. Now he sits at home, twiddling his thumbs, bored because he has nothing to do. Well, that’s not true; there are a lot of things to do around his house, Masao just refuses to do them. The house is in need of a lot of little repairs, but it never seems to cross his mind to do them now that he has the time. His wife asks him to bring in the laundry while she is at work, but he ‘forgets’ even while sitting looking straight out the window directly at the laundry hanging on the line. After his wife retrieves the laundry herself & hands it to him, he ends up making her fold it herself because he ‘forgets’ how to fold a sock. He laments that he never did household chores in his life, and now he doesn’t know how to do things. (But he is willing to put in the time necessary to learn how to play Go.) I wonder if he ever forgot how to answer the phone or sit in a chair during the 40+ he worked in an office? I seriously doubt it…yet, he can’t remember how to fold a sock, or even just figure out how to do it? Give me a break! And his poor (but also idiotically enabling) wife has spent all these decades working full-time while simultaneously doing everything in their home! The author ends the story with Masao looking forward to a retirement playing Go, writing poetry, learning English, and making the occasional rice ball—all while his wife continues to work full-time AND perform all of the household chores. And the reader is supposed to assume this is the logical happy ending? The way the author makes excuses for and normalizes such weaponized incompetence is truly appalling. The author seems to be saying, “Isn’t it cute how men are just useless, overgrown babies & we women have to kill ourselves doing everything?" Pathetic.

The most humorous part of the book is when Natsumi’s baby daughter becomes sick at daycare. Natsumi runs around like a hysterical chicken,
convinced her daughter is going to die of a deadly fever because she left the air conditioning on overnight! That was just so stupid and funny, I laughed out loud. ( )

I read this book as a buddy read with Hilary. There were five chapters, each one with a different main character. We read the book in five days, reading one chapter a day. It helped to read the book with a friend, especially because we had similar feelings about it.

I liked it but I did not love it. 3-1/2 stars

I went in with expectations that were probably too high.

What I liked:

I loved the five pen & ink illustrations of each character at the start of their chapter. They’re lovely and they have wonderful details and they set the stage for reading about that person.

I hoped it would happen and enjoyed when the characters ended up relating or being somehow related to the characters in the other chapters. That took time and it’s why I liked the fourth and fifth/last chapters better than the earlier ones. The star rating for me went from being barely a three to closer to a four.

I liked reading about the day to day slice of life moments of the characters. That was interesting. I liked how the librarian is in every chapter and how we learn more and more about her, and more and more about the other characters too.

What was mixed:

The “messages” were good: Try new things. Be open to new opportunities. All sides of people and different people & situations can be equally valuable. That people influence other people in important ways yet might never be aware of it. Think outside the box. We make our own meaning, from objects, from books, in life. Everyone is a part of the whole and everyone is important. That’s just it though: they’re all messages. There is nothing subtle about them nor do they just flow naturally. The few messages were distracting, and it got tiresome.

What we find out about the librarian at the end was surprising and interesting and it might have been the most realistic part of the book but it felt anticlimactic.

I did want something to happen but if it had the book would have probably irked me even more as far as things working out perfectly. I wanted the fifth character to be able to make it so that the elementary school kids were relating with the adults at the community center, as that had been the original intent.

What I didn’t like:

Everything was a message with a capital M. Everything. I felt hit over the head with the few messages. They distracted me from the story/stories.

I did enjoy the book but all the way through I felt as though something major was lacking. I never quite figured out exactly what it was but it’s how I felt.

Making major changes is made out to be too easy and “lucky things” happen to characters that just don’t happen to most people, no matter how open people are to it. If an almost effortless change had happened for one of the characters I could see it but for all five?! It felt too magical for me. I suppose some readers might find this inspiring but I found it depressing and not realistic enough. Making a change yes. Having everything work out perfectly with such little effort? It seemed miraculous and therefore not satisfying.

Miscellaneous:

The main characters by chapter: Tomoka, 21, woman, womenswear sales assistant. Ryo, 35 man, accounts department of a furniture manufacturer. Natsumi, 40, woman, former magazine editor. Hiroya, 30, man, NEET (not in employment, education or training.) Masao, 65, man, retired.

As I read I wondered if the books mentioned in the stories were real or made up. The list at the end shows they are real. I appreciate that.

I’ve read other books with the same storytelling style by other Japanese authors. I’m thinking in particular of another popular book for most, Before the Coffee Gets Cold which is another book that underwhelmed me. I’m willing to try more but I have to wonder if these books are not for me.

The queues for the paper editions of this book were too long so I read a library Libby eBook and also listened to the audiobook at times. It’s read by 5 different narrators, one for each of the five main characters giving them their voices but for me the audio was a failure because the librarian character’s voice had five vastly different sounding voices; that was too weird. I listened to the audiobook mostly to make sure of the pronunciation of people & place names and it was helpful for that but I wouldn’t recommend it as the edition for reading this book. ( )

Very nicely written, lovely stories for each people. Varied people as well. makes you feel included. Lovely that all the characters have linking throughout the stories. Lovely easy book to read. ( )