280 pages ;22 cm
Originally published in serialized form in Japan as Mina no Koshin by Yomiuri Shimbun in 2005. Originally published in (trade paperback) in Japan as Mina no Koshin by Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc., Tokyo, in 2006.
"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 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. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko's life, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel's end"--Provided by publisher.
Translated from the Japanese.
1.Cousins--Fiction.2.Families--Fiction.3.Friendship--Fiction.4.Mansions--Fiction.5.Pygmy hippopotamus--Fiction.6.Storytelling--Fiction.Dynamic Details