{"id":1140,"date":"2024-11-26T03:03:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T03:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2024-11-26T03:03:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T03:03:02","slug":"book-of-the-month-december-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=1140","title":{"rendered":"Book of the Month December 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

To round out 2024, Quizlit\u2019s Book of the Month December 2024 is Mina\u2019s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa<\/a>. A hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.<\/p>\n

This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n

Book of the Month December 2024<\/h2>\n

Mina\u2019s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa<\/h2>\n
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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.<\/p>\n

The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle\u2019s magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.<\/p>\n

As the two girls share confidences their eyes are opened to the complications of the adult world. Tomoko\u2019s understanding of her uncle\u2019s mysterious absences, her grandmother\u2019s wartime experiences and her aunt\u2019s unhappiness will all come into clearer focus as she and Mina build an enduring bond. Rich with the magic and mystery of youth,\u00a0Mina\u2019s Matchbox\u00a0<\/em>is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time, and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.<\/p>\n

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Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHaunting\u2026The clever Ogawa, whose previous work\u00a0The Memory Police<\/em>\u00a0drew wide acclaim in the literary world, has woven together a number of strands in her bold new effort\u2026Mina\u2019s Matchbox<\/em>\u00a0attains something like the eloquent sadness of Philip Larkin\u2019s 1947 novel\u00a0A Girl in Winter<\/em>, another story of dashed dreams. But a more useful analog may be a short poem by the twelfth-century Japanese courtier Fujiwara No Kiyosuke, which Kenneth Rexroth translated into English and included in his One Hundred Poems From the Japanese: \u2018I may live on until \/ I long for the time \/ In which I am so unhappy, \/ And remember it fondly.\u2019\u2026[Ogawa\u2019s] social commentary is as astute as her writing is elegant and vivid.\u201d
\u2014Book and Film Globe<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read\u00a0Mina\u2019s Matchbox<\/em>\u00a0like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.\u201d
\u2014Ruth Ozeki, author of\u00a0The Book of Form and Emptiness
<\/em><\/strong>
\u201cElegant\u2026A playground for Ogawa\u2019s interest in particular details\u2026Mina\u2019s Matchbox<\/em>\u00a0feels more familiar in the tradition of Latin American magical realism, especially Isabel Allende\u2019s\u00a0The House of the Spirits<\/em>\u00a0and Gabriel Garcia Marquez\u2019s\u00a0100 Years of Solitude<\/em>, with its enigmatic family lore and the rich, sophisticated practices of a fallen era\u2026Intimate\u2026[The novel] sparks the imagination toward faraway places.\u201d
\u2014The Japan Times<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Best Yoko Ogawa Books in English<\/h2>\n

The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/h3>\n
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Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n

Each morning, the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to one another. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant mathematical equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles \u2013 based on her shoe size or her birthday \u2013 and the numbers reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her ten-year-old son. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory.<\/p>\n

Revenge<\/h3>\n
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Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n

Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders \u2013 locked in the embrace of an ominous and darkly beautiful web, their fates all converge through the eleven stories here in Yoko Ogawa\u2019s Revenge. As tales of the macabre pass from character to character \u2013 an aspiring writer, a successful surgeon, a cabaret singer, a lonely craftsman \u2013 Ogawa provides us with a slice of life that is resplendent in its chaos, enthralling in its passion and chilling in its cruelty.<\/p>\n

The Diving Pool<\/h3>\n
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Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n

A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool \u2013 sparking an unspoken infatuation that draws out darker possibilities.<\/p>\n

A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, but rather than a story of growth the diary reveals a more sinister tale of greed and repulsion.<\/p>\n

Driven by nostalgia, a woman visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo. There she finds an isolated world shadowed by decay, haunted by absent students and the disturbing figure of the crippled caretaker.<\/p>\n

The Memory Police<\/h3>\n
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Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n

To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.<\/p>\n

When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn\u2019t forget, and it\u2019s becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?<\/p>\n

if you enjoyed our Book of the Month December 2024, check out our profile of the wonderful Yoko Ogawa here<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To round out 2024, Quizlit\u2019s Book of the Month December 2024 is Mina\u2019s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa. A hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them. This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. Book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}