LONELY CASTLE IN THE MIRROR

RELEASED 22 APRIL 357 pages | Paperback/ebook

Author Mizuki Tsujimura

Publisher Doubleday

This Japanese bestseller is the story of Kokoro, a girl who has been traumatised by run-ins with her classmates and now refuses to leave her house. Then her bedroom mirror glows and she passes into a magic castle, meeting six other Japanese kids who’ve been summoned the same way. A girl in a wolf mask tells them they can visit the castle for nearly a year, and if one of them finds a hidden key, it will grant any wish. But the castle has rules; if they’re broken, a wolf will gobble them up.

In Japan, hundreds of thousands of people shut themselves away like Kokoro does (they’re often referred to as hikkikomori). Lonely Castle highlights this issue; at the same time, its fantasy set-up could be straight out of an E Nesbit story.

Disappointingly, though, after the intriguing opening the book becomes excessively slow; one of its main purposes is to celebrate mundane daily life and the birth of friendships, but there’s a very long wait for any substantial developments. The final reveal is also familiar (and guessable) if you’ve followed popular anime in the 2010s.

The real-life subject deserves an inspirational story, but the book’s portrait of adolescent fears and depression isn’t exceptional, and is diluted rather than deepened by the tale’s length.

Andrew Osmond