The year is scooting along, isn’t it? How are we halfway
through August already? What have you been reading? I always welcome
recommendations, though I never promise that I’ll get them read, knowing the
length of my TBR (To Be Read) list at any given moment. Here is this year’s
second adult fiction compilation.
P.S.
Although other posts are technically also adult fiction, I did not nickname
them under that banner, making this post still the second.
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<This is
a standalone novel.>
The public library in [fictional] Blue Sky Valley, North
Carolina, is a sanctum for readers, as libraries should be. Unlike other
libraries, fictional characters can step off the page into the contemporary
world. Greetings, Mr. Darcy! Hello, Ichabod Crane! Ahoy, Robinson Crusoe!
Thirty-year-old assistant librarian Stella Parker is oblivious to this. She’s
living in the outdated house inherited from her late father, and she’s holding
onto bitterness from a breakup. So she burns one of her journals. She’s always
seen actual words rising from people, places and objects, but once she “murders”
the words in her journal, she experiences purple words that physically hurt as
they arise. Words matter, but why these ones? The truth starts coming to
light when Arnie (Arnold) Cohen, the 68-year-old head librarian, has a medical
emergency, and he needs her to keep his friends in the library. Suddenly,
Stella is faced with her fictional crush, a 27-year-old WWII soldier named Jack
Mathis. He is her ideal man: heroic, handsome, kind. It’s too bad that there’s
a time limit. Like a library checkout, characters must return to their books
after two weeks, and characters can only “visit” once a year. Jack’s already
been out for 11 days. With a villain on the loose (Stella’s fault) and the
annual Blue Sky Valley Festival coming up this weekend, Stella must maintain
control while keeping the library’s secret. She must also face the reality that
all stories come to an end, no matter how good. All magic comes with a price.
An adult
fiction novel of contemporary romance and magical realism, it honors libraries,
favorite stories and anyone who’s ever fallen for a fictional character. The
title caught my eye, but it’s the idea of favorite characters wandering around
where you can interact with them that really struck me. This story should’ve
been wondrous, but Stella is a woman who’s stuck and is so fixated on romance
that she’s miserable. I’ll admit that if she was my friend, I’d be struggling
with her. Frustrating Stella aside, this is a novel of hope and renewal that
brims with magic, the wanderlust found through reading and book boyfriends
come to life. There is whimsy and heartbreak and quite a bit of charm.
Menu of Happiness (Oct. 14, 2025/US edition)
by Hisashi Kashiwai.
Jesse Kirkwood, translator.
<This is
the third novel in a series.>
Anyone for thirds? The food detectives and
father-daughter duo are back at the Kamogawa Diner serving up lost recipes and
reviving suppressed memories. They may not realize it, but their clients aren’t
just hungry for food; they’re hungry for nostalgia. A professional dancer looks
for kake soba (plain noodles in hot broth with no trimmings)
as an upscale lacquerware artisan wants curry and rice made by his estranged
daughter who’s currently in prison. A former piano prodigy who injured her own
hand for love seeks yakisoba made by the man she loves but
hasn’t seen in 15 years while a man unhappy in his decades-long marriage yearns
for gyoza served by the parents of the woman he once had an
affair with in his student years. A businessman wants omurice (an
omelet on fried rice) made by the mom of his best friend growing up and a
popular romance author desires croquettes that she serially stole from a stall
as a desperately hungry child. They come for the sustenance and will return for
the solace.
This is
the third novel in Kashiwai’s Kamogawa Food Detectives series,
and it’s the third of his I’ve read. The adult fiction, cozy mystery is one to
warm you up on a chilly day and bring you the luxury of comfort food, even if
one isn’t familiar with all of the food in these books. Step into the diner on
Shomen-dori and sit yourself down. Might Chef Nagare serve you omi beef
with miso sauce and tempura vegetables? Will you wash it down with the hojicha (a
Japanese green) tea Koishi brings you? Or do you prefer sake? A nice cava? The
entire book is succinct and reading it makes me feel nutrient-rich. Hungry,
too!
Book One: The Kamogawa Food Detectives
Book
Two: The Restaurant of Lost Recipes
Tales from the Cafe (Oct. 12, 2021) by
Toshikazu Kawaguchi.
Geoffrey Trousselot, translator.
<This is
the second novel in a series.>
<Alert:
Potential spoilers ahead.>
Clang-Dong. Return to Tokyo’s Funiculi Funicula to
meet four new patrons looking to travel back in time. There are familiar faces,
too, in Kazu Tokita, waitress and coffee pourer, and Nagare Tokita, Kazu’s
cousin and proprietor of the cafe. There’s Miki, Nagare’s daughter, who’s
eager to become the cafe’s pourer (when she’s seven). Gohtaro Chiba
wanders into the shop wanting to meet Shuichi Kamiya. Gohtaro’s been raising
Shuichi’s daughter all these years as a single dad, and she’s about to get
married. Yukio Mita’s life isn’t going according to plan. He isn’t the
successful potter he thought he’d be, and his mother (Kinuyo), his biggest
champion, passed away from cancer without her or his sister (Kyoko Kijima) ever
telling him she was sick. Katsuki Kurata wants to travel to the future to see
Asami Mori, but he doesn’t want to meet her if either of two circumstances has
come to pass. Kiyoshi Manda, a homicide detective at Kanda Police Station,
wants to give his wife (Kimiko) a birthday gift, but he needs the advice of
those at Funiculi Funicula. And ever present is the woman in the white dress:
Kaname. Kazu’s mom. Clang-Dong.
The
follow-up to “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” is a short, adult fiction, Japanese
literature novel that isn’t limited to one genre. There’s time travel in a
contemporary setting with dashes of magical realism and patrons who each must
face their past (or, for one, his future) in order to move on with their lives.
It’s wistful and charming, deeply moving and sometimes sad. The story contains
the multitudes of life and death, love and loss, the gladness of renewal and
the awe of happiness. It manages to show pragmatism within the magic of the
cafe.
Book
One: Before the Coffee Gets Cold
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