Mina's Matchbox
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Summary
On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting stars
After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life.
While the 1970s transform Japan, her uncle's magnificent colonial mansion is a place out of time; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pet pygmy hippo. Equally beguiling are Tomoko’s relatives, especially her cousin Mina. Their growing friendship draws her into an intoxicating world – one full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.
Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, 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.
'Beguiling' New Yorker
‘Beautifully composed’ Financial Times
‘Effervescent’ New York Times Book Review
‘Transfixing’ Time
'I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end' Ruth Ozeki
After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life.
While the 1970s transform Japan, her uncle's magnificent colonial mansion is a place out of time; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pet pygmy hippo. Equally beguiling are Tomoko’s relatives, especially her cousin Mina. Their growing friendship draws her into an intoxicating world – one full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.
Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, 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.
'Beguiling' New Yorker
‘Beautifully composed’ Financial Times
‘Effervescent’ New York Times Book Review
‘Transfixing’ Time
'I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end' Ruth Ozeki
Reviews
[A] beautifully composed novel… [and] elegant translation… Ogawa has turned a deceptively simple account of a year spent with exotic relatives into something closer to a universal fable about the precarious wonder of growing up
Financial Times
