Macha on Monday

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

After enjoying Hot Chocolate on Thursday so much, there was no way that I could not close the cover on it and not dive right into its companion novel, Macha on Monday.

The Marble Café in Tokyo is an assuming place. One might even miss it if they were not looking properly. Yet so many people can trace defining moments in their lives back to the café and its mysterious founder, Maestro. A tea merchant finds love, a kamishibai performer expresses her feelings to her standoffish grandmother, a socially awkward young man looks at his classmate hierarchy a little differently, and a cat listens as an old second-hand book seller tells it about the Tanabata Star Festival. Dreams, desires, needs, and the means to fulfill them, sometimes all that’s needed to achieve them is a place to sit and gather one’s thoughts.

The ripples that were established in Hot Chocolate on Thursday have reached further and Macha On Monday tells a fresh batch of uplifting stories from characters in Kyoto who have ties to Marble Café and Maestro. The story progression follows the same flow as its predecessor, this time with the chapters telling a story from each month over the course of a year. Stronger themes of social anxiety, traditional vs modern attitudes, and self-discovery and acceptance colour the stories, still achieving the uplifting feels that flavoured the first book, though a little more forcefully.

The prose is simple with the perfect number of descriptive phrases that conjure the visual scene in the reader’s mind, making the book completely enveloping and creating a mind-space in which the reader can breathe and become aware of their own state of being; mental, emotional, physical etc. That is the power of these types of novels, what makes them so special, important, and enjoyable.

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

While I enjoyed its predecessor a lot more, Macha on Monday is a book that still brightened my week and made it easier to breathe through. A delightful read.

Author: Michiko Aoyama, 2021. Translated by E. Madison Shimoda.

Published: Original Japanese edition published by Takarajimasha Inc., Tokyo. First published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, Penguin Random House, 2026.