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Relatively easy read, with lots of everyday vocabulary, but lacking an engaging story
もしも、この町で is a snippet of a 6th-year elementary school girl's life in an uneventful rural village, where her family runs a guest house.
With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that the story is very much character-driven, but unfortunately the 188 pages are as uneventful as our main character, Nagisa, and her siblings believe their village to be. They help their parents and grandmother run the guest house, we see Nagisa go to school and interact with her friends, their participation in a child ‘kagura’ (a dramatic performance at a shrine involving dancing and music), and … some more helping out the guest house. The book also goes into random tangents at seemingly every opportunity, as if desperately trying to make the book long enough.
If anything, the main ‘event’ in the book is the appearance of a group of ‘mysterious’ guests from Tokyo. They booked a stay at the guest house for an entire week. Now, why would they stay for that long, in a village like this? How mysterious. And they booked two rooms, when they are three people. Why would they do that? How mysterious. They also drive around all over the village in their white van, visiting as many places as they can, including Nagisa's school, really making the most of their time. How mysterious. Just what is going on???
It doesn't sound very mysterious, does it? And it really isn't. The book tries to make some mystery out of it, and while it doesn't entirely fail, it's still quite underwhelming. The characters in this story aren't terribly interesting, which is a fairly substantial blow to a story that's character-driven. There unfortunately isn't much else to latch on to. I did get some vocabulary mostly related to festivals out of it, and the family's cat is amusing and arguably the most interesting part of this book. It meows in a certain way right before a phone call comes in, and otherwise behaves like a human. Apparently, the grandmother also understands what it says.
For those wanting to know what the mystery is all about without having to read through the entire book, I will spoil it all here:
The ‘mysterious’ guests are a film director with his two … assistants? Producers? We never get to know. They come to the town location scouting for their upcoming film. And while never confirmed, I, and the characters themselves, have a suspicion that the cat is actually the grandfather, who passed away three years ago, judging by its behaviour.