A Son of the Rock

Penguin, 2024, 249 p. Translated from the Japanese お探し物は図書室まで (O-sagashi mono wa toshoshitsu made, literally “Please go to the library for what you are looking for,”) POPLAR Publishing Company, 2020, by Alison Watts. Illustrations by Rohan Easson.

This book’s title is surely designed to appeal to book lovers. Yet, in a sense, it must be preaching to the converted. Book lovers will all have used libraries and, crucially, already read books and thus need no encouragement to pick one up.

There are five stories within, all with a similar trajectory. Each of the lead characters has a reason to visit the Hatori Community House situated by a local school and gets drawn to its library where the librarian, Sayuri Komachi, recommends books to them and at the same time proffers a gift of a felted toy from the many she spends her time making.

The viewpoint characters are:-

Tomaka, a sales assistant in womenswear at Eden, a Department Store.

Ryo, who works in accounts for a furniture manufacturer but yearns to start an antiques business.

Natsumi, a former magazine editor moved sideways to a less fulfilling role on having had a child.

Hiroya, a thirty-year-old NEET who has neglected his talent for drawing.

Masao, recently retired and feeling a lack of direction.

Unfortunately, this all involves a lot of repetition of information as each character relates the details of their first visit to the Community House in very similar terms. There are also some instances of the relaying of characters’ internal thoughts or reactions which are rendered far too colloquially thus breaking readers’ suspension of disbelief.

There is discussion of the content of the borrowed books (in one case it’s not borrowed, since it’s too heavy to carry far, but rather consulted,) publishing details of which are appended in the Bibliography.

Special pleading for the utility of reading occurs when one of the narrators tells us “Books belong to everybody: the creators, the sellers and the readers.” Similarly, Ms Komachi says to another, “Readers make their own personal connections to words, irrespective of the writer’s intentions, and each reader gains something unique.”

It’s all very easy to read and undemanding but somehow feels inconsequential.

Pedant’s corner:- Uses British spellings but has the occasional USianism – sidewalk, sneakers, schoolyard, some schoolchildren are said to be in third or fourth grade. Otherwise; “inside in my stockings” (either ‘in my stockings’ or ‘inside my stockings’,) “I did use to talk with him” (did used to.)