What You Are Looking for Is in the Library

A quiet Japanese novel about a cast of unmoored characters who, in different chapters, stumble across the same wise librarian.

Each time, the librarian makes them a short list of books, with a last title seemingly unrelated to anything they told her. The wildcard book inevitably piques their interest and changes their lives, reframing how they think about work, success, and themselves.

This is a love letter to libraries, so it is no surprise I liked it. What I didn't expect was how much Aoyama focused on employment — how much our jobs can impact our quality of life and sense of self, lulling us into apathy even as ennui leads us to forget how we got somewhere, feeling like passive, unaccomplished beings that life happens to instead of active changemakers.

A sweet aspect of the text is that when people open up to those around them about how they are feeling, making a big change, or both, they are met with support and acceptance. No one drops the ball on being happy for their loved ones, or doubts their odds of making something happen. Their responses are a reassuring balm instead of a volatile plot device. Maybe a little idyllic, but in another sense, the bare minimum.

Aoyama also discusses how books hold meaning determined not only by their authors and editors and publishers, but also by each and every reader who interprets the text differently, based on their perspective and circumstances. Different people reading the same book will have vastly different, sometimes contradictory takeaways. Likewise, rereading books at a different time in life can resonate much differently than before.

Handing someone a book cannot change their life if they never open it, and we will never be able to predict how someone else (or even we ourselves) will take to it. This interactive potential is what makes art and media (made by humans, not generative AI, don't get me started) consequential. Because sometimes we don't know what we're looking for until we find it.

~coming back to add a quick CW about fatphobia, which IMO was almost too cartoonish to be hurtful, but was definitely a running theme~