"Self-discovery and the transformative power of books and book recommendations are at the heart of this rich, funny, moving memoir that exudes all the style of a finely-crafted novel."
What a wondrous work. A memoir that reads like a remarkable novel, Nanako Hanada’s The Bookshop Woman is a beautiful, funny ode to transforming your life — and the lives of others — through throwing oneself into the big, wide world, and through making exactly the right book recommendations at exactly the right time.
“My life is so lacking…I feel like I want to see things I’ve never seen before. To put myself out there, become a new me, a happy me.” So Nanako asserts near the opening of The Bookshop Woman. Recently separated from her husband, she’s realised she has few friends, and little life beyond working in Tokyo’s Village Vanguard bookshop.
Then, after stumbling upon the PerfectStrangers meet-up site, Nanako resolves to take control of her life and meet new people through creating a profile as a quirky “sexy bookseller” offering personalised book recommendations to the folks she meets through the site.
As she encounters dozens of strangers, Nanako hits on truisms that will strike a chord with all of us who love books and the satisfaction that comes of making the perfect match between books we love and people we know: “you couldn’t recommend a book to someone if you didn’t really know them, not really. And you couldn’t recommend a book if you didn’t know it well enough yourself. And moreover, you couldn’t recommend a book without good reason. You had to want that person to read it because you’d thought about what that specific book meant to them.”
Perfectly crafted, emotionally engaging, and radiant with hope and humour, The Bookshop Woman is an absolute joy. A book to heartily recommend to those who feel lost, and those who might benefit from realising how much books can enrich one's life.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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