MINA'S MATCHBOX is the latest title by popular Japanese author Yoko Ogawa.
In MINA'S MATCHBOX, we meet Tomoko who is Mina's cousin who comes to stay in her house for a year; Tomoko and Mina's mothers are sisters.
Tomoko, 12, is a year older than Mina. Mina is asthmatic and everyone at home is always on alert towards her health. The cousins soon hit off and become good friends, they enjoy each other's company and everyone makes Tomoko feel at home. Slowly she develops a rapport with each individual in the family and learns their secrets - spoken and unspoken.
At her aunt's, there's her Uncle the one who gives her the first impression of the year ahead. There's of course her Aunt, who mostly smokes, drinks and is generally quiet. Mina's brother who's at college abroad, Rosa, Mina's German grandmother, the firm housekeeper, the stoic gardener and the family pet Pochiko, a pygmy hippo. It's a small yet quirky family, dysfunctional but warm and loyal towards each other.
When I first came across the book, its teasers and summary pointed to it being a sinister story with a dark secret lurking around it. Now I'm not sure why it was implied and promoted that way because I found the story sweet and of course like any family, it was dysfunctional. We observe a family through the eyes of 12-year-old Tomoko who comes from a different social setting.
From the moment she meets her Uncle who's come to pick her up, she's fascinated with him, his lifestyle and the possibility of her being a part of it all. Tomoko may be a teenager however there's no teenage drama we witness, we see a curious young girl trying to make sense of the home she's come into. She slowly gets to know each and every family member and sometimes her curiosity gets the better of her and asks them some uncomfortable questions. Which is how she discovers and explores on her own the secrets of her aunt's family.
What I enjoyed -
Tomoko is a quirky, curious and smart protagonist. She is written well and her voice gives us a view of her host family whom she comes to love.
Every character is quirky and we meet them all at leisure knowing more or less their life stories. It was surreal and fun to see them having a mini hippo as their pet.
There's a backstory to everyone we meet in the story which makes this a wholesome, satisfying story.
I love how vividly the author creates various scenes in the story, from Mina riding the hippo to school, Tomoko visiting her uncle's factory, the girls watching the Olympic games and the Christmas celebration. The little emotions and experiences are captured wonderfully.
One thing I'd like to say is the narration at certain points was written in a way that created tension, a worry in the reader who anticipates the explosion of a dirty secret or the like. This had me turning pages quickly wanting to know if I was right or if all would be well in the girls' lives.
MINA'S MATCHBOX is a sweet, heartwarming story of friendship and family including the good, bad and ugly parts. Read it for its quiet yet powerful observations of a family dynamic through the eyes of a 12-year-old. No, it's not at all childish. It's sweet, curious and filled with warmth.
From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.
“Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, and her dashing, charming uncle, who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.
In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her great-aunt’s experience of the Second World War, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.
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