The Nakano Thrift Shop - Softcover

Kawakami, Hiromi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846276020 ISBN 13: 9781846276026

Publisher: Granta Books, 2017

Synopsis

Among the jumble of paperweights, plates, typewriters and general bric-a-brac in Mr Nakano's thrift store, there are treasures to be found. Each piece carries its own story of love and loss - or so it seems to Hitomi, when she takes a job there working behind the till. Nor are her fellow employees any less curious or weatherworn than the items they sell. There's the store's owner, Mr Nakano, an enigmatic ladies' man with several ex-wives; Sakiko, his sensuous, unreadable lover; his sister, Masayo, an artist whose free-spirited creations mask hidden sorrows. And finally there's Hitomi's fellow employee, Takeo, whose abrupt and taciturn manner Hitomi finds, to her consternation, increasingly disarming. A beguiling story of love found amid odds and ends, The Nakano Thrift Shop is a heart-warming and utterly charming novel from one of Japan's most celebrated contemporary novelists.

About this title

Review:

Praise for The Nakano Thrift Shop
"Subtle, graceful, wise and threaded on a quirky humour, this exploration of the connections and disconnections between people kept me smiling long after the last page."
--Julia Rochester, author of The House at the End of the World

"The Nakano Thrift Shop is really a love story, albeit a very offbeat one... A gentle book, full of charm [and] radiating leftfield charisma."
--Emerald Street

Praise for The Nakano Thrift Shop

"Subtle, graceful, wise and threaded on a quirky humour, this exploration of the connections and disconnections between people kept me smiling long after the last page."
--Julia Rochester, author of The House at the End of the World

"The Nakano Thrift Shop is really a love story, albeit a very offbeat one... A gentle book, full of charm [and] radiating leftfield charisma."
--Emerald Street

"Hiromi Kawakami's charming novel illuminates moments of kindness, love and friendship that pop up like the unexpected treasures amid the shop's dusty collection of pretty mismatched bowls and plates, castoff eyeglasses, task lamps and old electric fans."
--The Minneapolis Star Tribune

." . .[A] modern Japanese slice-of-life drama."
--Booklist

Praise for The Nakano Thrift Shop

"A gentle, humorous novel."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Kawakami lavishes attention on quotidian minutiae and exquisitely awkward pauses, ending scenes on maddeningly unresolved but vibrant images. [...] It feels a lot like daily life in Tokyo, but odder."
--The New York Times

"The novel presents a fine-grained portrayal of its characters' lives [...] [Its] pleasures [...] revolve [...] around the granular details of the everyday."
--Los Angeles Review of Books

"[Kawakami] knows she doesn't need fireworks to keep the reader entertained, and is pushing her exploration of form and style."
--The Japan Times

"A window into another world is opened by this pleasant but sprightly look at daily life in a small thrift shop in a Japanese city. Love and disappointment, professional rivalry, filial conflict and longings for another life illuminate these characters who became friends to the reader by the finish. Great summer read."
--Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPIBA)

"Charming, quirky, and wise, this is a warmhearted character study of the undervalued, the obsolete, and the hidden gems among us all."
--Monique Truong, author of Bitter in the Mouth

"Subtle, graceful, wise and threaded on a quirky humour, this exploration of the connections and disconnections between people kept me smiling long after the last page."
--Julia Rochester, author of The House at the End of the World

"The Nakano Thrift Shop is really a love story, albeit a very offbeat one... A gentle book, full of charm [and] radiating leftfield charisma."
--Emerald Street

"Hiromi Kawakami's charming novel illuminates moments of kindness, love and friendship that pop up like the unexpected treasures amid the shop's dusty collection of pretty mismatched bowls and plates, castoff eyeglasses, task lamps and old electric fans."
--The Minneapolis Star Tribune

." . .[A] modern Japanese slice-of-life drama."
--Booklist

"Readers will grow to care about these quirky characters [...] making "Nakano" an utterly charming little book."
--Philippine Daily Inquirer

"A window into another world is opened by this pleasant but sprightly look at daily life in a small thrift shop in a Japanese city. Love and disappointment, professional rivalry, filial conflict and longings for another life illuminate these characters who become friends to the reader by the finish."
--Eric Boss, Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association

About the Author:

Born in 1959 in Tokyo, HIROMI KAWAKAMI is one of Japan's most popular contemporary novelists, famous for her literary, off-beat fiction. She made her debut with the short story 'God Bless You' in 1994, which received the Bunkamura Prix des Deux Magots and the Murasakishikibu Literature Award. Hebi wo fumu [Tread on a Snake] won the Akutagawa Prize in 1996 and Oboreru [Drowning] won both the Ito Sei Literature Award and Joryu Bungaku Sho (Woman Writers' Prize) in 2000. Her novel Manazuru won the 2011 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize. ALLISON MARKIN POWELL is a literary translator and editor in New York City. Her translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Fuminori Nakamura, and Kanako Nishi, and she was the guest editor for the first Japan issue of Words Without Borders. She maintains the database, Japanese Literature in English, at http://www.japaneseliteratureinenglish.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1846276020
• ISBN 13: 9781846276026
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256