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Mina's matchbox

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In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens, and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.

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Availability

Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

823 OGA m

Publisher

New York : Vintage Books., 2025

Collation

280 p. ; 21 cm

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780593313411

Classification

800

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

Ed. 1

Subject(s)

Historical Fictions
Japanese Literature

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Yoko Ogawa

Other Information

Level

High School

Book Segment

Reading for pleasure

Reading Level

Independent

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