The Nakano Thrift Shop: A Novel by Hiromi Kawakami

I saw this book at the library and the cover was so cute, I just couldn’t resist checking it out. I know, I know, I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but who doesn’t? Really? That said, the description also hooked me: I love thrift stores and I love Japanese fiction.

The Nakano Thrift Shop did not disappoint. The novel follows in that great Japanese literary tradition of deeply intimate writing. The story was simple, but poignant; it was recognizable and human in its simplicity, in its ordinariness. The events of the novel could have happened anywhere and to anyone, and that’s what makes it so relatable and so touching. Readers will find a part of themselves here in some way.

The novel revolves — unsurprisingly — around Nakano’s thrift store, a kind of junk store that sells amazing and banal things, and its employees. A young woman, a worker at the store, is the protagonist through whose eyes we view this small world. Her interactions with Nakano, a quiet young man who is her colleague, the shop owner’s sister, customers, and others within the orbit of the shop are the focus of the novel. This novel is about capturing a short moment in time, a time and world bracketed by the opening and closing of the store; it is a slice of their interconnected lives.

The events that take place are mundane: sales, returns, fixations on objects in the shop, the comings and goings of certain customers, falling in and out of love, the opening and closing of the store. Nothing “happens” but the slightest of events change the dynamics of the shop and its denizens, revealing a new perspective. The novel reveals how thin our veneers are, and how small actions can suddenly strip away our layers. The reader is treated to that peeling away, gets to witness characters in their most human and vulnerable form. That is the brilliance and appeal of this novel.