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What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama

Jun17

Serene, Calming, Beautiful

What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama is a serenely beautiful Japanese fiction novel. This is a book that will sink into your heart and soothe your soul.

In the story we hear five stories focusing on five different people who are searching for meaningful lives – without realizing that every life is meaningful and every life is valuable. They all need “somebody who believed in me.”

The librarian does not just have a vast knowledge of books, she has a perception of people. She knows just what each individual is looking for. She presents each one with a small gift as well as pointing them in the direction of the books. Each gift is designed to help that person think about their life. “It’s as if she sees me, just as I am.”

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Sisters Under The Rising Sun by Heather Morris

Jun13

Powerful

Sisters Under The Rising Sun by Heather Morris is a powerful true story of survival in the Far East during World War II.

The novel starts in 1942 as the Japanese are invading Singapore. The fear and terror at the docks has been captured by the author. Some, make it home. However, the main characters are captured and spend the war in several Japanese P.O.W. camps. This is their story.

The women show much bravery and resilience. They develop a camaraderie, determined to keep going. Comfort is found in the setting up of an orchestra – which is just the women’s voices. They raise morale giving concerts which even the Japanese guards enjoy.

For the women, their war is one of death and disease in the tropical heat, as well as fear, starvation and cruelty. We witness man’s inhumanity to man.

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Four Seasons In Japan by Nick Bradley

May31

Serenely Beautiful

Four Seasons In Japan by Nick Bradley is a gentle contemporary novel that I read in just one sitting.

Japanese fiction is soothing for the soul, and Four Seasons In Japan is no exception. There is a calmness and an ethereal beauty to the story.

This is a book within a book as we meet a young translator whose love for novels has gone cold. An accidental encounter with a book left behind on a train, awakens her passion for books once more.

The reader travels from Tokyo to rural Japan as a character goes to stay with his grandmother. He longs to find himself and to decide what to do with his life. Pressure from his mother to become a doctor has unsettled him.

We were created to follow our own dreams and not the dreams of others.

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The Woman In The White Kimono by Ana Johns

May30

Lost & Found

The Woman In The White Kimono by Ana Johns is a powerful and heartbreaking dual timeline novel that I just could not put down. Though it is a fictional story, it is based on fact.

The action is set in Japan in 1957 and also in present day America and Japan. The chapters alternate between the two periods. In present day a young woman searches for the truth about her father’s navy career that took him to the Far East. A deathbed revelation means that she travels to Japan to find out the truth.

Japan in 1957 was very different to modern Japan. Fresh in the minds of its’ people was World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs. Marriages and alliances with Americans were actively discouraged. Every family wanted their daughters to make fine matches with good Japanese families. Daughters who chose American partners were cast out. Any babies that were of mixed race, and especially those born to single girls were unwanted at best, cruelly denied life at worst.

The reader follows a character to a dreadful, beyond words, maternity home that was actually based on real life.

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