Hot Chocolate on Thursday, by Michiko Aoyama

Twelve interconnected stories from the celebrated Japanese author Michiko Aoyama.

Michiko Aoyama is a bestselling author in her native Japan. Two of her books, What You Are Looking For is in the Library and The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park have recently found their way into English translation. Now her first novel, Hot Chocolate on Thursday, has been published. (The sequel, Matcha on Monday, is due out later this year.)

The novel is comprised of twelve interconnected stories, each featuring a colour theme. Characters are briefly introduced in one chapter, then expanded up in the next, until the final chapter where the original main two characters, a waiter and his customer at a cafe, are brought full circle. In between there is a broad cast including mothers, child care workers, artists, gallery owners, students, travellers and an elderly married couple. These are everyday people, hoping for love and connection, but fearful of rejection and loneliness. Aoyama’s books have sometimes been described as therapy, and there is a self-help quality about her writing, but her light touch also succinctly captures the human dilemmas we all face. The fiction of Alexander McCall Smith - stories that explore the moral quandaries of everyday people - would probably make a good parallel.

I was struck by one paragraph in Aoyama’s novel, where she neatly encapsulates how the mind often works against itself:

“We live in ignorance of what the next second holds. There are things beyond our control that come to us unbidden. In those moments, anxieties that multiply endlessly cause us to imagine fearful scenarios. Even though these are stories of our own fabrication, we are threatened by them as if they were immutable futures handed down to us by someone.”

Gentle, easy reading, feel good fiction, containing a core of wisdom and truth.

Hot Chocolate on Thursday, by Michiko Aoyama. Published by Doubleday Uk. $34.99

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