Nanako Hanada: The bookshop woman who refused to close the chapter

A Japanese memoir explores how literature can rescue a life in crisis.

At a bookshop-themed capsule hotel, in Tokyo, Japan, on January 19, 2017. The Bookshop Woman celebrates the power of literature to spark meaningful conversations and build deep connections. | Photo Credit: TORU HANAI/REUTERS

When things fall apart, some of us bury our heads between the pages of a book, hoping that our problems will vanish if we escape into other worlds. We stay there for as long as we can, even as reality waits to hit hard once the last page is turned. And then there are some of us who are fortunate to turn this passion for reading into a vocation. The Bookshop Woman, written by Nanako Hanada and translated from the Japanese by Cat Anderson, tells the story of one such reader.

Nanako is the eponymous bookshop woman. She has the rare ability to write about herself without getting too self-absorbed, and her prose is a pleasure to read. It flows smoothly, as if she were confiding in a friend rather than writing for an audience of faceless strangers.

The Bookshop Woman

Nanako Hanada; translated from the Japanese by Cat Anderson

Hachette

Pages: 224

Price:Rs.599

The Bookshop Woman is set almost entirely in Tokyo. The opening scene has Nanako seated alone at a family restaurant well past midnight, trying to stay awake. She is “on a break” from her husband. Having vacated their shared flat a week ago, she has been struggling to find cheap accommodation. On this particular night, she plans to stay at a super sento—a big public bathhouse with several facilities—where one can pay to sleep in a lounge chair. She awaits the moment the clock will strike two so that she can check in late and save a little.

Apart from her relationship crisis, Nanako is also stuck in a rut on the professional front. She earns a living selling books and assorted knick-knacks at a branch of Village Vanguard, a chain of stores whose owners have decided to shift their focus from books to items that are more profitable. While Nanako prides herself on the gift of being able to recommend the perfect book to anyone based on their current situation, her own distress seems too immediate and overwhelming to address.

The author explores how capitalism exacerbates the emotional crises that young professionals go through when their day jobs, which take up much of their waking time, stop being fulfilling. In the absence of a stimulating love life, this drudgery at work is even more excruciating.

“Until now, I’ve always spent my days off with my husband. If I’m on my own, what will I do with my free time?” Nanako wonders. “Maybe it’s because of my work, but my only hobbies are reading and visiting bookshops—of course I have no friends to spend my time off with. My life is so lacking. I have nothing of my own.”

Not one to give up, Nanako signs up on PerfectStrangers, a “people-matching” website meant not only for dating but also to make friends. She hopes that her offer of recommending books to strangers will draw attention to her profile. Her adventures with the individuals that she encounters form the nucleus of this book, which examines closely the delights and dangers of the online world.

This book celebrates the power of literature to spark meaningful conversations and build deep connections. Nanako recommends books by Takehiro Higuchi, Jack Kerouac, Ellie Omiya, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Hayato Ikeda, Yoshiaki Nishimura, Richard Bach, Kazuo Ishiguro, Francoise Sagan, Kotaro Sawaki, and James Clavell, among others. While her recommendations are appreciated more often than not, her well-intentioned efforts occasionally end up in failure as well.

Mirror to everyday insecurities

The Bookshop Woman also holds up a mirror to the everyday insecurities of being on social media. The more one is compelled to curate an appealing digital self in order to capture eyeballs, the more one ends up losing oneself in the race to compete with others. Eager to sound trendy, Nanako describes herself as a “sexy bookseller” at first, not realising what this description could evoke in the minds of some men on the prowl. She wants to talk about books whereas they want to talk about sex.

This mismatch between expectations would only be too relatable for readers who use dating apps. The templates that these apps offer users to capture their essence in a short description and a few photographs rarely do justice to the complexities that human beings are made up of. The gap between what one sees online and who one meets offline leads to much disappointment, heartbreak, and anger. Worse, it leads to sexual harassment of the kind that Nanako has to deal with.

That said, the process of chatting about books with strangers makes up for the lack of excitement at her workplace, and even fuels the desire to look for another job that would involve working with books. While going through her options, Nanako offers insights into the bookselling business: “Even the big chains are going down like dominoes, never mind those little independent shops outside train stations. Books have a low unit price, for a start, and low profit margins, so you can’t make any money. There aren’t jobs going in normal bookshops.”

Close encounters with another kind

Notwithstanding the unpleasant encounters, Nanako goes on to discover that there are men out there who enjoy her company, take her seriously, believe in her capabilities, and do not have sex on their minds. One of them is a man named Endo who, incidentally, is not much of a reader.

When Nanako tells him that she might want to work in a bookshop, Endo admits: “I wouldn’t know about that, I never really go to them. I sometimes buy books if I have to and there’s no digital version available. But if I already know which one I want, I just get it on Amazon.” Endo thinks that physical books take up space. Even when he buys magazines, he just leaves them on the train for other readers once he finishes reading. “Are bookshops really necessary? What are they there for?” he asks with endearing sincerity.

Endo’s remarks do not discourage Nanako; rather, they inspire her to reflect and to articulate her vision. They discuss sales, commissions, shop rent, and much else that is romantic in a nerdy way. He even tells her: “I don’t know if it’s a thing in the bookshop industry, but if you became a something-or-other advisor, you could probably make decent money.” When she says she is not particularly enthusiastic about taking on assignments that make her feel like a “greedy grown-up, making money from a job with no real meaning”, he replies: “So be an advisor with heart!” A man like Endo would be easy to fall for, with all the green flags so prominently on display.

Does Nanako go down that route? What happens to the estranged husband? Do they get back together? What kind of job does she land up with after moving on from Vanguard? Read The Bookshop Woman to find out. It is a quick read, and should not take more than a couple of days, especially if you are on a holiday or in need of something hopeful to pull you out of your midlife crisis.

Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, journalist, and book reviewer.