“Days at the Morisaki Bookshop,” by Satoshi Yagisawa
Harper Perennial/TNS
There is a place in every decent-sized city where all the world’s problems could be solved, if we would pay attention.
I’m talking about bookstores (or, maybe even better, libraries). Their treasures of knowledge may be why, all of a sudden, there are so many books set in stores.
For a book lover, the only thing better than a great book is a great book that’s about books. And, whether it’s Louise Erdrich’s “The Sentence” (set in a store modeled on her own Birchbark Books), “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” or “Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore,” they all incorporate the idea that books are magical objects that contain the wisdom of the ages, secrets to getting along with others and a heck of a lot of fun.
An enticing setting is practically the whole reason for this year’s “Days at the Morisaki Bookshop,” which could have bibliophiles racing to schedule trips to Tokyo. Satoshi Yagisawa’s overseas blockbuster (translated by Eric Ozawa) takes place in the real-life Jimbōchō Book Town, a neighborhood composed almost entirely of bookstores (more than a hundred of ‘em). It’s like Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, except with Toni Morrison and Haruki Murakami volumes instead of magic wands.
“Morisaki” is a wispy little novel about the relationship of an aimless young woman and her uncle, who rescues her by offering her a job in his Tokyo store. It was a smash in Japan and a bestseller around the world, so lots of people have enjoyed the cozy tale but, for my taste, not enough of the book actually took place in the bookshop and the story, which offers the possibility of romance for a couple of characters, wasn’t hugely satisfying.
If you do some searching for bookshop books, there’s something for almost everyone, with heavy doses of romance and mystery. I may have found my ideal bookshop book when I read “Hyunam-Dong,” by Hwang Bo-reum (translated by Shanna Tan). It soft-pedals the romance, although it’s left as a possibility that store owner Yeongju will pursue something with an author she hires for a reading — after she makes a success of the store she opened after she burned out in the business world.
Like pretty much all bookshop books, “Hyunam-Dong” includes a bonus: book recommendations, many of them Korean (“Paris Bookshop” even ends with an appendix that lists a couple of pages’ worth of the titles noted in the book). But what sets “Hyunam-Dong” apart is how much it reveals about getting a store up and running.
There are no huge revelations for Yeongju, who is a little ambivalent about both her store and her life, but she learns a lot about bookstores along with us. By the end of “Hyunam-Dong,” she has encountered enough surprises to figure out that bookshops — and love — rarely go by the book.
