Summary and Reviews of Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa

Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa

Mina's Matchbox

A Novel

by Yoko Ogawa
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • First Published:
  • Aug 13, 2024, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

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.

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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Mina's Matchbox is narrated by Tomoko thirty years after its events take place, and this distance allows the novel to explore complex, adult themes while still being about the activities and preoccupations of childhood. Tomoko sees glimpses of darkness behind her family's veneer of wealth and glamor—her aunt's drinking; her uncle prolonged disappearances; her cousin Ryuichi's distance from the family—but doesn't yet understand their full significance. The novel takes the form of a series of vignettes, and is less about plot and more about evoking the feelings of childhood, a certain awe and sense of limitless possibility. Each new character and each minor event feel to the reader as monumental and immediate as it would have to a sheltered twelve-year-old...continued

Full Review Members Only (634 words)

(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Hippos in Literature

In Mina's Matchbox, a book filled with quirky characters, Yōko Ogawa introduces one of her most memorable creations yet: Pochiko, a 35-year-old pygmy hippopotamus. Flying in the face of the species' reputation as aggressors, Pochiko has a sweet temperament, charming the novel's protagonist and the readers alike. But she is far from the first hippo to beguile readers.

There have, unsurprisingly, been many children's books to feature hippos: Hippos Go Berserk! by Sandra Boynton, The Hiccupotamus by Aaron Zenz, George and Martha by James Marshall, The Truth About Hippos by Maxwell Eaton III, and more. But hippos have also been featured in books, poems, and short stories for adult readers.

Frank L. Baum's 1901 short story ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Mina's Matchbox, try these:

  • We Deserve Monuments jacket

    We Deserve Monuments

    by Jas Hammonds

    Published 2024

    About this book

    More by this author

    Family secrets, a swoon-worthy romance, and a slow-burn mystery collide in We Deserve Monuments, a YA debut from Jas Hammonds that explores how racial violence can ripple down through generations.

  • The History of a Difficult Child jacket

    The History of a Difficult Child

    by Mihret Sibhat

    Published 2024

    About this book

    A breathtaking, tragicomic debut novel about the indomitable child of a scorned, formerly land-owning family who must grow up in the wake of Ethiopia's socialist revolution

Read-Alikes are one of the many benefits of membership. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Yoko Ogawa
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    A Map to Paradise
    by Susan Meissner
    From the USA Today bestselling author of Only the Beautiful. 1956, Malibu, California: Something is not right on Paradise Circle.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Girl Falling
    by Hayley Scrivenor

    The USA Today bestselling author of Dirt Creek returns with a story of grief and truth.

  • Book Jacket

    Jane and Dan at the End of the World
    by Colleen Oakley

    Date Night meets Bel Canto in this hilarious tale.

  • Book Jacket

    The Antidote
    by Karen Russell

    A gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town.

Who Said...

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

T B S of T F

and be entered to win..