A UNIQUE SLICE OF LIFE

It's a quiet story that takes place in a modest Japanese household around the middle of the 20th Century (deduced from the stuff in the manga). It's very gentle and delicately drawn, and in it a sensitive book-loving girl approaches the end of middle or high school (probably the latter), and is soon to transition to work. As the big change begins to loom, she is reading a tranlated 19th Century novel. She reads it everywhere, at home, at school, and on the way between, and finds it captivating.

All around the girl as she reads, ordinary life plays out, and the depiction of all of her family and friends is masterful: memorable ordinary people created each with a few quick strokes. The girl has a HUGE imagination and it shows.

Not much, you say? Well, it was for me. I first read it around 2014 and just recently found myself longing to read it again in 2020. I wasn't disappointed.