Satoshi Yagisawa: “Understanding what you want out of life takes a lifetime”

“From there, everything was a series of disasters”tells Tatako, the young protagonist of My days at the Morisaki bookstorefirst japanese novel Satoshi Yaguisawa. “I stopped eating and sleeping, (…) I lost my job (…), I felt like I had thrown myself into the void.”

Turns out, overnight, Tatako stays no boyfriend and no job. The guy crashes her and everything that was known and predictable in her life disappears. In the most unlikely way. But it happened. And it was like a steamroller. He lost weight like asparagus, slept all day and felt like she was thrown off a cliff. “It was a way like any other to avoid reality. (…) I fell asleep and during this time the days passed and passed in the microscopic universe of my room”.

One afternoon, one of those who couldn’t stop sleeping, he wakes up and sees that his phone had a message. It was his uncle Satoru. “A strange man. Sometimes even arrogant and had something eccentric that bothered me”. Final which, thanks to the invitation of his strange uncle, Tatako, ends up settling in Tokyo, in an old district very popular with writers, intellectuals and the curious. It’s just that in Jinbocho, that’s the name of the place, there was his uncle’s bookstore. Three generations of the Morisaki family have passed through here and now it was her turn. And so, almost without understanding anything, she finds herself living in the attic of the small family business, covered in books that smell of damp and absolutely withered.

Amid six thousand specialized volumes of modern literature, filth, mental disorder, and lack of desire to move on, the young girl in this story undergoes a transformation for which she will have to thank so much for books—which until then had never interested her. – as to the teachings of his uncle Satoru. “It is not always easy to understand what is expected of life. Actually, understand that it takes a lifetime”he told her once during a long conversation. “Sometimes you have to stop. It’s like a stopover on a long journey. Imagine that you have dropped anchor in a small bay. You will rest a bit and your ship will sail again.”.

My days at the Morisaki bookstore It’s a small novel, with enormous content. A beautiful story capable of igniting each of our senses. He tells us about disappointment, defeat and unforeseen. But also love and the possibility of finding ourselves, which we can only achieve through the experience of pain, loss and despair.

“Unexpected circumstances open doors for us that we could not imagine”Satoru said. And that’s what this novel is about. Of the unexpected. Of get lost to find yourself. That things work out over time and that for all this to happen, it is a condition to travel through marshy, inexplicable and uncertain paths that seem endless. But one day they end.

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