I think it not unreasonable to claim that Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is a ‘slight’ book. Not in terms of size (though it isn’t that large) but rather in terms of narrative and style.
Not a huge amount happens it seems to me, and there is a lightness in the style which is presumably from the original, the translation, or a combination of both. So an ‘easy read’ then.
The thing that struck me most of all was that, with a woman as the lead character, I thought it read as if written by a woman – whereas the author is a man, Satoshi Yagisawa. A compliment. Perhaps when a woman reads the book it may be only too clear to her that the author is a man; I can’t possibly know. Yet even though I was impressed by this – and I quite like Japanese fiction – I won’t be reading the sequel.
Ian Gouge - Writer 