This was a 3.5 rounded up to 4 for me due to its dreamy oddness. At the heart of the story is a young girl who is trying to make sense of her new surroundings and in the process uncovers things she might have preferred not to. But then there's the whole pygmy hippo and obsession with the family company's soft drink, and I was left wondering what I was missing about the significance of these seemingly random inclusions. Some might find it off-putting, but I mostly considered it whimsical in a dark way.

"If you wanted to distinguish her from everyone else in the world, you'd say that she was a girl who could strike a match more beautifully than anyone."

This lovely novel focuses on 12-year-old Tomoko who spends a year with her aunt's family in 1972. Her cousin, Mina, is the one who collects matchboxes with tiny, elegant stories pasted within them. Beautiful and asthmatic, she also rides a pygmy hippo to school, and loves books.

It's all strange to Tomoko, whose father died young and whose struggling mother needs the time for a course to improve her dressmaking skills so she can earn a better living. The change from Tokyo to the lovely house in the coastal town of Ashiya is great, but her aunt, cousin, and handsome German uncle make her part of their family.

She's a kid, of course, and wants to snoop in order to understand her aunt's distance and drinking and her uncle's long periods of absence from the house. She's curious about Mina's German grandmother, who gently shares photos of her family, who are lost. Tomoko will make no momentous discoveries because no. matter what she suspects, her love will temper her need to know.

I loved that there was no resentment of Tomoko, and she is not jealous of what Mina has that she does not. How refreshing.

And Pochiko, the pygmy hippo? A wonder.

Many thanks to Pantheon and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review of this deceptively simple novel.

This is a cute and enjoyable little novel by an author that I quite enjoy. I was under the impression that this was an earlier novel, but it actually is more recent than her more famous novels. It's a great story and it's well written (though I read a translation so it's actually hard to judge this).

Tomoko finds herself sent to the home (mansion) of her aunt while her mother goes off for further schooling. The book tells the tale of what she experienced in the year that follows. My favorite detail is that there's a pygmy hippo living in the family's garden, a rather large pet.

My enjoyment of this novel was a bit tampered by my own (untrue) expectations. Based on the description provided for this book, I wrongly assumed there would be some light thriller/mystery vibes as we got to know the family’s secrets along with Tomoko - however I was very much mistaken. This novel is more of a slice-of-life story about Tomoko’s time living with her aunt, uncle, cousin, and co while in middle school. The story is family-focused and strong on character building.

Mina’s Matchbox was my first novel by Yoko Ogawa and it is clear immediately that she is a fantastic author. I very much enjoyed her prose and am personally a fan of translated Japanese literature. Ogawa writes beautifully.

Overall I enjoyed this work although my enjoyment was tempered by my (maybe unfair) expectations. I am definitely interested in going back and exploring more of Ogawa’s works.

I would recommend this to readers who enjoy Japanese culture and light family dramas.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

one of the things I love most about Ogawa’s writing is her ability to zoom in. this novel is a perfect example of that.

i’m a huge fan of the memory police and enjoy that each of her novels is a bit different from the other. Mina’s Matchbox is no different in that it is very different from her other work.

We follow Tomoko as she is shipped off to her uncles house shortly after her father dies. there she witnesses her very different side of her family. everything centers around Mina, Tomoko’s younger cousin, and more specifically her illness and how that effects the other members of the family.

the descriptions of the house on the coast are just wonderful and truly transport you

if you’ve read any of Ogawa’s other work, don’t skip this one.

Yoko Ogawa's "The Housekeeper and the Professor" is one of my favorite books, so I was excited to read this. The story is gentle and delightful. The characters and relationships are unique and compelling and I enjoyed spending time in a world created by Ogawa again. Highly recommended for readers who appreciate great writing and characters. So glad I had the opportunity to read and review this ARC. Thank you, NetGalley. #Mina's Matchbox #YokoOgawa

A slice-of-life genre where you follow a girl named Tomoko as she lives 1 year in her aunt's house. Each day, she discovers unusual secrets of how their family lives and the house itself like a pet hippopotamus.

There wasn't much of a plot besides reading about what she experiences and nothing big happens.

The book is for those who like a casual story and reading daily life.

I was unfortunately not in the mood for this kind of genre, which is why I rated it 3 stars and sadly had to DNF it. One day, I might finish this book as it was still very well-written.

Thanks to Netgallery and the publisher for the ARC!

I love Yoko Ogawa, and she never disappoints me with her work. The cast of characters was interesting, and all so different from one another. I love the setting and environment this book created it really helped to create well rounded and dynamic characters

Hmmmm this was not really for me. The prose is so so lovely but I was so bored. I felt like I was slogging through this, and I couldn’t really connect to any of the characters. It took me literally a week to read this because I had to keep putting it down. I was expecting some exceptional jewel of a novel the way people describe Yoko Ogawa but this was just not it.

ARC provided by NetGalley

Thank you to Netgalley and Pantheon for an advance copy of Mina's Matchbox.

I chose to read Mina's Matchbox after reading Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police in 2021 for a pandemic era book club. I really like the dystopian/speculative vibe of that book. Ogawa's writing was interesting and compelling. I was interested in her newly translated novel, Mina's Matchbox, as I am on a literary fiction kick. Also, I have been gravitating toward translated Japanese fiction, so I was excited to read this.

Mina's Matchbox protagonist, Tomoko, is a young girl sent to live with her aunt and her cousin, Mina. Tomoko is charmed by the lifestyle of her cousin and the small community they have cultivated within their isolated home in Ashiya. As a newcomer, Tomoko is able to voice what is unspoken in the household. Their secrets are thick in the air of the Mina's family, and Tomoko explores the grey area of these secrets. Ogawa sprinkles in historical events throughout the novel, making the world feel more real and adding important context for Mina's family.

Mina's Matchbox is very slice-of-life, and flips from continuous action between chapters to small vignettes of Tomoko's life at random. The book was often funny, but the plotless structure of the book wore on me. The dysfunction of the family skewed my feelings - I was more concerned about the uncle's whereabouts and Mina's health than Tomoko's character development. Ultimately, Mina's Matchbox was too slow for my tastes.

This is a slice of life story about a young girl, Tomoko, who moves in with her Uncle and Aunt for a year. She grows close to her cousin - Mina who becomes her best friend and experiences a world very different from the one she grew up living.

The story doesn't have a ton of plot, more just day-to-day anecdotes and if that's your kind of book then this one is for you! I was not in the mood for this sort of story which made me lower the rating but I do think it's a cute story that most would enjoy. There are sweet moments, but I did find that there were a lot of small questions that went unanswered for me. This meandering story is pure vibes and sweetness, not a lot of action.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage catalog, and NetGalley for the ARC.

Ogawa bats it out of the part with yet another stellar book. Deeply impacted me and everything worked. Chef's kiss.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ebook. In this book, Tomoko looks back when she was twelve and spent a year with her aunt and her family in a coastal town in Japan in 1972. The house is grand, as her uncle is president of soft drink company, but this charming novel revolves around Mina, her thirteen year old cousin who suffers from asthma, writes elaborate stories based on the images on the covers of matchboxs that she’s given, becomes obsessed with the Japanese volleyball team that is powering through the Olympics and, oddest of all, rides a Pygmy hippopotamus to school every day. Tomoko is captivated by it all, but slowly uncovers secrets that no one ever talks about.

Through the eyes of young Tomoko, a visitor to an affluent Japanese family's home, we see a diverse multi-generational family and their servants, and their somewhat strange and unusual life. I was amazed that the family kept a pygmy hippopotamus in their back yard gardens, where other exotic animals once lived. That Tomoko's young and frail cousin Mina rode the hippo to school every day was another surprise.

I began to wonder how much of this if pure fantasy and how much of the family could be real in some circles. There is a German grandmother too, and the head of the household, Tomoko's uncle, is mysteriously absent for long periods of time.

To say this was a bizarre household would be somewhat accurate. I enjoyed reading it though, and following Tomoko's thoughts about the family and about her cousin Mina's love of storytelling. Mina uses the pictures on matchboxes to tell her stories, and keeps the matchboxes with her madeup stories in larger boxes in her room.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Mina's Matchbox.

I've enjoyed the author's previous books and really like the way she writes.

Mina's Matchbox isn't the typical genre I read; I requested the ARC because of the author.

Mina's Matchbox is about twelve-year-old Tomoko who stays with her aunt's wealthy family in Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan.

During her year long stay, she becomes part of this enigmatic family and becomes privy to their family rituals, routines, and secrets.

The writing is warm and rich, filled with nostalgia and happy and bittersweet memories as Tomoko recounts this pivotal year in her life.

She recounts the memorable year with her sickly, but charming cousin Mina, her kind aunt and handsome uncle, and the family's German matriarch.

It was wonderful to read about a family who welcomes Tomoko into their family with open arms; there's no bickering or backstabbing, no harping or harsh words, but there are secrets; her uncle disappears for weeks at a time, her aunt drinks too much, and Mina's obsessive hobby of collecting matchboxes is due to her wish to escape from her sickly health.

The narrative is a coming of age story, a time in Tomoko's life she reminisces about fondly and with appreciation, establishing friendships that will last decades into the future.

There's no suspense or urgency, no shocking revelations; this is about a teenage girl who steps into a new life far different from the one she's left behind in Tokyo and how this experience will shape her character.

This isn't for everyone, including me but I read it because I admire the author.

Also, great cover!

Vintage Ogawa. A slow-burn novel that drew you in and kept you interested. Once you started reading, you couldn't stop. You can't help but find yourself immersed in a time and place of a memory that feels rich and meaningful. I loved getting to know this family through Tomoko's eyes - her perspective as a child and then again as an adult. A thoughtful and nostalgic story.