ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟

Three delinquents on the lam break into an abandoned shop to hide out for a while. An envelope comes through the mail slot — did somebody see them? No, it’s a letter from somebody seeking advice from the former owner of the store. But the store has clearly been abandoned for decades. So the boys take it upon themselves to write back. Little by little, they learn the secrets of the store, and how it connects to a certain children’s home.

There’s an English translation (“Miracles of the Namiya General Store”) with lots of reviews, if you want to see what people had to say about it purely from a plot/story aspect. It’s a good book and I enjoyed it, but reading it in Japanese, toward the end I was definitely feeling the length and getting tired. There’s a large cast of characters and I found it useful to write a character list to keep track. The book leaps into the story at the beginning without describing the characters or how/why they came to be in this situation, but as you keep reading the questions will be answered. The POV characters change and at times it can feel like a collection of short stories. However, they’re all connected.

The exchange of letters is a major part of this book and there’s a range of tones and formality levels within them. There are some expressions and grammar points which are typically more commonly used in letters than fiction, and this is potentially a good learning opportunity if you haven’t really seen them before.

I read the regular Kadokawa Bunko version. The kanji/furigana feel like it’s written to be accessible to teens and up. This isn’t a children’s book, but there’s definitely more hiragana and furigana here than in Higashino’s other books. (like 容疑者Xの献身)

There’s also a Tsubasa Bunko version of this, and they always include full furigana. Reviews of that edition on Amazon say it’s the same text, sometimes to the dismay of parents who don’t want their children encountering certain words/topics.

Content warnings: illness, death, suicide, child abuse