So this was a strange little book.

Not only did I not know who recommended it to me (I know I’ve seen it around but it’s not in my TBR list so I have no clue), I’m not even sure how I found the book because I thought all the library books I got this round were from the TBR list. So… how did I even find the book to borrow it?

Anyway, I suppose all this strangeness fits the book because like I’ve said before, it’s strange. The Nakano Thrift Shop is a collection of stories about the eponymous shop, but most of them have no point. It’s all chronologically connected, and the narrator of all the stories is Hitomi, but I quite frankly did not understand anything nor did I feel very charmed by the book.

One big example of how I did not connect with the book would be the relationship with Hitomi and Tateo. Apart from the fact that characters are not sketched out in this story, the relationship between them doesn’t seem to develop. It starts, and then stops, and I have no idea what happened in between. Then again, basically all the relationships in this book are equally random and inscrutable, and if you asked me to explain what happened between the characters, I’d be able to give you the events but not the why.

That said, the book does seem to touch on the theme of interpersonal difficulties. Perhaps the reason why everything is so hard to understand is because to Hitomi, people are hard to understand. While I don’t see the logic in their actions, it doesn’t feel like the writer is moving around chess pieces and the characters do feel somewhat realistic, if lacking in character development.

Overall, this was an interesting book to read, but it doesn’t inspire me to check out the author’s other stories.