This is a book for book lovers and particular those of us who love our local libraries. It is, of sorts, a love letter to libraries and librarians. What You Are Looking for is in the Library consists of 5 unique sections, all linked by a library located in a community house in Tokyo. Each section is narrated by a different character. The characters are widely varied – a young woman working in a department store, a 35-year-old man longing to open his own shop, a middle-aged mother, an unemployed young man, and a recent retiree. Each of them is seeking a change in their life and this brings them to the community house and the library. They are connected by this and there are little connections between each of them that become clear as you follow the story, but the individual stories mostly standalone.
It is their interactions with the librarian that they each share. This librarian is a strange, almost mystical woman, found behind the reference desk, felting small objects. For each patron she recommends books they are looking for, as well as a book they didn’t know they were looking for. And each one receives a “bonus gift”. Along with her strange book recommendations, she gives each a felted object that becomes meaningful to them in their personal journey.
All five are at a turning point in their lives. I was interested to note that for each of them, this is related – at least in some way – to their work and the meaning they find through their job. Aoyama establishes this in the first section with our narrator, a young woman working in a large department store. She’s dissatisfied with her job but learns to see meaning in what she does. It struck me that this was not how the story would go in an American novel. We tend to view a job like hers as somewhat “less than”. We all shop for clothes but we don’t view selling them as a career or that it matters much whether or not the salesperson is good at what they do. And yet, as this section points out, it actually matters hugely.
The final section is from the perspective of a recently retired man, struggling to find meaning now that his job no longer defines him. Again, the emphasis he put on his career and the respect it gave him felt more Japanese than North American.
I really enjoyed this in the audio format as each section had a different narrator. This helped me to really view each section on its own and see each character as unique. It highlighted their various voices and the ways their descriptions of the librarian both overlapped and widely differed.
This version was also a translation from Japanese by Alison Watts. While I can’t compare it to the original language, it felt like a very good translation as the cadences and voices all felt very true to the various ages of the narrators.
Karissa Reads Books 
This sounds like a really cute book I would enjoy. I love a nice book about books and librarians, but the idea of these little felted objects in the mix really appeals to me. I also enjoy this idea of bestowing honour and dignity to all jobs, no matter what they are. We definitely need more of that here in North America.
I think you’d enjoy this! It feels realistic but with just a hint of something magical. The characters are great and nicely varied and the way work and life balance is focused on felt both culturally different but also familiar to me as a woman and parent.
I used to watch the original Ninja Warrior show, which took place in Japan. People would have jobs like “gas station attendant,” and there’s was no sense that that job was for high school kids or losers. In America, we value having a job above all else, but we’ve dismissed much of our economy, which lives on service work, as jobs for high school kids or drop outs, paying them less than us worth their time. We can’t have it both ways. In fact, most American paychecks you can expect to lose about 25 percent to taxes, etc. So if federal minimum wage is $7.25, you’re only making $5.44 per hour. If you’re lucky to have a full-time job, that is a weekly paycheck, take home, of $217.50 per week. AMERICA!! 😐
I know I’ve heard that 7.25 number before but i just…don’t get it. How? How could people live on that in 2024? Do they? Is it possible in any part of America? Minimum wage in Canada is $16.65 and that’s widely understood to not be enough. For example, in my region, a living wage is calculated at $26 and that’s for the bare minimum. I live in a high cost area but there aren’t many spots you could get by on $16 so $7.25 seems actually impossible to me. I got paid more than that babysitting when I was 15!
As for the book, I really appreciated its perspective on finding value in whatever work you do. The solution wasn’t simply finding a “better” job. I work retail and I like my job and I’m good at it but sometimes I do feel conscious of the idea that it’s “not a grownup job”. On the other hand, this book does touch on the way we place too much emphasis on our employment and our identity is so wrapped up in our work. Even more so in Japan, I think.
Well, when two Republicans love each other very much, they get together and make a biiiig decision. They decide that if the minimum wage were raised, it would just make everything more expensive, so why would we throw off an economic system that is clearly working as it is. Then, they go on TV and convince everyone that minimum wage jobs are just for burger flipping high school kids, and if you want a real job, you should go to college, but when you graduate, you are an idiot for having spent so much on a degree. 🥲
Oh man, your comment is funny except that it’s so horrifying. There was a moment during the pandemic where it seemed like maybe we as a society would start valuing people who serve and sell our food more highly and then we just seem to have decided, nope, essential service but not worth paying more.
Several of the women in my cohort have jobs on campus, which is pretty normal, expect all the campus jobs pay minimum wage ($7.25 in Indiana). I tried to tell them it was literally not worth their time, especially if they have to sacrifice school work to work-work. Tuition is too much to be messing around with that kind of job. Plus, there are restaurants right there that pay way more.
I remember that being a question when I was in school – do you work for money and risk your grades or simply focus on school and maybe try for a scholarship? I always worked when I was in university but I was always able to get jobs that paid more than minimum wage or brought in tips.
I made slightly more than minimum wage in college, but this is when we thought minimum wage was the best you could do. Now, we’re aware that it is not a useful amount for anything, even high school students. But I worked midnights and could do my homework, so it was what it was. Plus, I think my rent was $250, or something like that.
That’s the huge difference to my mind. Cheap rent was still a thing then. Now in a city like Vancouver, working minimum wage your entire paycheque would barely keep you housed.
Okay, this sounds really good! I’ve seen this one around but am not always a reader who likes “bookish” books so I was wary about the story being centered around a library. But it does sound very much more about the individual characters and their searches for meaning, which I do love the idea of finding at the library! Adding to my tbr immediately, great review 🙂
Thanks! I don’t usually like “bookish” books either. Most books centred around bookstores, for example, tend to irk me. But I didn’t find that a problem here and I really liked the way the library linked the characters together. I hope you like it too!
[…] What You are Looking for is in the Library – Michiko Aoyama (Harlequin Audio, 2023) (translated from the Japanese by Alison Watts) (8 hours, 22 minutes/304 pages) […]