Aoyama Michiko
Doubleday
14 August 2025
304
eBook - EPUB
Contemporary Fiction
ARC via NetGalley
Nestling at the bottom of a five-storey apartment block in the community of Advance Hill is the children's playground, Hinode Park, where you will find a very special hippo ride. According to urban legend, if you touch it with the area of your body that needs comfort, you will see swift signs of recovery.
Meet a couple of the neighbours who use the hippo ride, from a highschool student to an eighty-year-old cleaning lady:
- Kanato lays his head on the hippo's back, hoping to recover the confidence he lost when he started at his scary new school;
- Saha, a new mother with no friends, strokes its mouth, in case she can bring back the words she spoke when she was an award-winning retail assistant.
Three more neighbours will come to the magical hippo for help, as they discover how to resolve emotional pain for themselves, if their heart is open and their minds are at peace, in this deeply moving celebration of kindness, community and understanding.
The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park was a cute and heartwarming book told as a series of five tales, each with a different protagonist but all set in the save neighbourhood and all revolving around an eventual trip to the hippo statute in the park. There is no magical realism aspect to this book; all the characters are instead helped through self-awareness and assistance from other people they meet during the story. Yet, the hippo is still the focal point around which their worries and hopes are given voice. If you enjoy these cosy and sweet Japanese contemporary stories, then this is certainly a book you'll have fun reading. I am giving it four stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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