
Mina's Matchbox
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Nanako Mizushima
About this listen
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.
“A story of first enchantments and last gasps…Effervescent."—New York Times Book Review
“Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.”—Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
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 seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, 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. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her great-aunt’s experience of the Second World War, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.
©2024 Yoko Ogawa and Stephen B. Snyder (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, NPR, The New Yorker, and BookPage
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A Most Anticipated Book of the Summer from People, The Atlantic, TIME, Boston Globe, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly
A Best Book of August from the Christian Science Monitor
A Best New Book of the Week from Parade
“A story of first enchantments and last gasps…Effervescent…’We look at the world once, in childhood,’ Louise Glück wrote in her 1996 poem ‘Nostos.’ ‘The rest is memory.’ Ogawa captures the enduring spark of that imprinting and its oracular glow. We revisit those moments when the match was first struck, when the future still felt like ours to ignite.”—New York Times Book Review
"Ogawa evokes the secret crushes and crushing secrets of girlhood with charm and elegance."—People
"There’s such an elegance to the way Mina’s Matchbox unfolds...The world Yoko Ogawa builds is quiet, warm and it should feel comforting. But there are peculiarities about the whole thing that keep you on the tips of your toes."—NPR
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Story
Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent COVID case.
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An excellent dead ringer of the ridiculous depths of the art world
- By JLB on 11-15-24
By: Hari Kunzru
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Little Rot
- A Novel
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Adepero Oduye, Chukwudi Iwuji
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.
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Hated the story but 5/5
- By Jacob on 06-04-25
By: Akwaeke Emezi
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Human Acts
- A Novel
- By: Han Kang, Deborah Smith
- Narrated by: Sandra Oh, Deborah Smith - introduction, Greta Jung, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Amid a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed. The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.
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Watchout for female reading the boy's part ch. 1!!
- By Kais on 03-23-25
By: Han Kang, and others
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A Thousand Times Before
- A Novel
- By: Asha Thanki
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her. Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past.
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The performance was an unpleasant listen for me.
- By Ms. Esq. on 03-10-25
By: Asha Thanki
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Hell of a Book
- A Novel
- By: Jason Mott
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Ronald Peet
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
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Four Stars for Content, One More for...
- By Paul Frandano on 08-12-21
By: Jason Mott
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Austerlitz
- By: W. G. Sebald
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.
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To each their own
- By Sebastian Romero on 04-23-20
By: W. G. Sebald
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Motherthing
- By: Ainslie Hogarth
- Narrated by: Adina Verson
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Ralph and Abby Lamb move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, Abby hopes it’s just what she and her mother-in-law need to finally connect. After a traumatic childhood, Abby is desperate for a mother figure, especially now that she and Ralph are trying to become parents themselves. Abby just has so much love to give—to Ralph, to Laura, and to Mrs. Bondy, her favorite resident at the long-term care home where she works. But Laura isn’t interested in bonding with her daughter-in-law. She’s venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, and life with her is hellish.
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A great story with horrible narration
- By Calliope on 09-18-23
By: Ainslie Hogarth
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The Bandit Queens
- A Novel
- By: Parini Shroff
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband. As in, she actually lost him—he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. And it’s a rumor that just won’t die.
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Not great
- By Brandy T on 01-09-23
By: Parini Shroff
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The Rich People Have Gone Away
- A Novel
- By: Regina Porter
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt, Shayna Small
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect.
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descriptions of food
- By Lilly Daniel on 08-16-24
By: Regina Porter
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The Funeral Cryer
- A Novel
- By: Wenyan Lu
- Narrated by: Helen Crevel
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Funeral Cryer long ago accepted the mundane realities of her life: avoided by fellow villagers because of the stigma attached to her job and underappreciated by her husband, whose fecklessness has pushed the couple close to the brink of breakup. But just when things couldn't be bleaker, she takes a leap of faith—and in so doing, things start to take a surprising turn for the better.
By: Wenyan Lu
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Crow Mary
- A Novel
- By: Kathleen Grissom
- Narrated by: Carolina Hoyos
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in a Métis named Jeannie; makes a lifelong enemy in a wolfer named Stiller; and despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband.
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CROW MARY — WOW!!! WHAT A FANTASTIC NOVEL!
- By Marie G. on 08-22-24
By: Kathleen Grissom
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The Trackers
- A Novel
- By: Charles Frazier
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hurtling past the downtrodden communities of Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming. Through a stroke of luck, he’s landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office.
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So Good
- By Ray Stewart on 04-28-23
By: Charles Frazier
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Their Divine Fires
- A Novel
- By: Wendy Chen
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
For listeners of Pachinko and The Mountains Sing, a gorgeously poetic family saga that begins at the dawn of the Chinese Revolution and spans 100 years to trace the intricate lives of four generations of Chinese and Chinese American women grappling with history, obligations, betrayal, and love in order to come into their own power and learn not just how to survive but flourish.
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Confusing but lyrical
- By WPH on 09-17-24
By: Wendy Chen
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Dust Child
- By: Que Mai Phan Nguyen
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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From the internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing, a propulsive and moving tale of wartime love, family, and loss, as an American GI, two Vietnamese bargirls, and an Amerasian man are forced to make decisions during and after the Việt Nam War that will reverberate throughout each other’s lives.
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Beautiful and moving
- By TPT on 06-17-23
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The Instrumentalist
- By: Harriet Constable
- Narrated by: Emilia Clarke
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Anna Maria has only known life inside the Pietà, an orphanage for children born of prostitutes. But the girls of the Pietà are lucky in a sense: most babies born of their station were drowned in the city’s canals. And despite the strict rules, the girls are given singing and music lessons from an early age. The most promising musicians have the chance to escape the fate of the rest: forced marriage to anyone who will have them.
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Republic of Music
- By D N Wolfe on 09-19-24
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Trespasses
- A Novel
- By: Louise Kennedy
- Narrated by: Brid Brennan
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family’s pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment—Michael is not only Protestant but older and married—Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites.
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Exquisite
- By Suzanna on 11-10-22
By: Louise Kennedy
Very Enjoyable
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Not a Page Turner
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The sweetness of the story
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Simple and Profound
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Relationships and family
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Enchanting story
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Narrator
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I never found the point of the story
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This book has a few charming moments and even a couple touching moments but it is the story of a young neice whose father has died and whose mother goes to school to become a seamstress. There is not enough money for the daughter too, so she goes to live with her tremendously wealthy aunt and uncle and family.
I won’t go into the story but the nagging question from the start is why the aunt and uncle can’t help financially to the mother??!!
So on and so forth. Many other loose ends.
The saving grace of this book is a glimpse into the ability to communicate emotions in the quiet Japanese culture that avoids displays of emotion or direct conversation.
Boring and so many loose ends
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