Takako’s boyfriend has just unceremoniously dumped her after announcing he’s engaged to his other girlfriend, the real one — the one she’d never heard about, but one whose existence now seems obvious in retrospect. Why was it they never had tea at his apartment, always hers? Suddenly at a loss for what to do with her life, she accepts an offer from her uncle to help him with his bookshop. Moving into a little room above the shop and struggling with depression, she begins slowly habituating herself to her odd uncle and his place here in Tokyo’s Jimbocho neighborhood, saturated with used bookstores and coffee shops. Although at first she’s merely there out of resignation — she needs a place to stay, after all — as the time passes she opens herself up to both the people around her in the shops and to the books within, and begins rebuilding herself. Days is all about human connection, experienced through literature and conversations and (frequently, in this novel) conversations about literature. Although the prose and its translation are very plain — unornamented, as Asimov used to describe his own style — there is nevertheless richness and beauty here. The settings, which range from cozy shops to the beauty of the mountains, are always vivid, and the relationship drama was compelling — about love and finding one’s way. I thought it lovely in its simplicity.