A review by sharkybookshelf
What You Are Looking For is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

4.0

Librarian Sayuri Komachi has the unique ability to sense exactly what a patron needs, even if (especially if) they don’t know it themselves, and recommends just the book to help them…

Hardly a book that knocked my socks off, but it was…lovely, and sometimes you just want that between heavier reads. It does veer towards what I think of as “quirky Japanese fiction” (which I don’t usually enjoy) but was light enough on the quirkiness for me to cope.

Each chapter introduces a different patron, and whilst they are varied ages, they are all at a crossroads and feeling a bit lost in their life. The premise is pretty twee, with a librarian who magically knows exactly which seemingly irrelevant book the patron needs to inspire them, but, as a bookworm, it’s certainly an appealing idea and I was happy to suspend my disbelief. And the issues that the various character were grappling with do give some insight into the expectations and functioning of Japanese society.

The librarian herself was an odd character, the descriptions of her physical hugeness felt a bit overdone, almost as a point of fascination, which I’m putting down to a cultural difference. I wish we got more of her story though - how did she come by this extraordinary ability? There were quite a few manga references that completely went over my head, but that didn’t really take away from the story - just a layer of it that I missed out on.

A slightly quirky, heart-warming story of the power of seemingly inconsequential books to spark something within us and change our lives.