The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino, translated by Sam Bett (2019. originally published in Japanese in 2012) is a sweet, poignant novel about how one person can make a difference in someone else’s life. Higashino is a popular novelist in Japan, comparable to US blockbuster author James Patterson–I thoroughly enjoyed his mysteries The Devotion of Suspect X (2005 Japanese/2011 English) in 2018 and Newcomer in 2019, but Miracles is a very different kind of novel. It reminds me somewhat of Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, another sweet, poignant Japanese novel that my book group read in 2022 but I didn’t review here.
The novel opens with three thieves breaking into an old, abandoned general store in a small town when their car breaks down and they are on the run. While hiding out, a letter appears in the mail slot, and they realize that they are in the general store where the nearly-retired, widowed proprietor gave advice for years to anyone who sought his counsel. Anyone could write him, place their letter in the mail slot, and the next morning pick up their answer in the milk crate behind the store. He answered each one meaningfully, and it gave his life purpose after his wife died and his son lived far away.
As the thieves bicker about what to do — should they answer the letter or not — it becomes clear that time is passing differently outside the general store. Filled with fabulism/ magical realism and links between the people writing to Mr. Namiya and the thieves, and going back and forth in time, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store is a satisfying journey that shows us how we are all connected.
I listened to it as an audiobook, and I don’t recall any obvious anti-fat bias, so consider it weight-neutral.
Reading While Fat 
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