When the museum is closed A novel

Rika takes a part-time job at a local museum: every Monday, when the building is closed to visitors, she is paid to converse in Latin with the statue of Venus. Rika has spent her post-college life keeping people at a distance, spending her days working in a freezer warehouse and avoiding the people in her building, including her elderly landlady and the possibly neglected boy who lives upstairs. But as she gets to know--and falls in love with--the opinionated, sensual Venus, Rika begins to want more for them both. All that stands in their way is museum curator Hashibami, who wants to keep Venus for himself. Yagi's sophomore novel is less biting than her cult-favorite debut Diary of a Void (2020), but its gentle surrealism nevertheless exposes truths about loneliness, beauty, and queer love. Fans of Kevin Wilson's Nothing to See Here (2019) will appreciate Yagi's blend of dark humor and empathy for her characters, while the unconventional love story may appeal to fans of Sky Daddy (2025), by Kate Folk or Blob (2025), by Maggie Su.

A young Japanese woman with a talent for speaking Latin gets a part-time job that changes her life in extraordinary ways. Narrator Rika Horauchi's new position at the local museum isn't the kind "you [come] across every day." For a few hours every Monday when the institution is closed to the public, Rika talks with a beautiful Roman statue of Venus. The job is as dreamy as it is deeply ironic: Latin is easier for Rika to speak than her own language. This unusual juxtaposition of characters is key to understanding Rika, whom Yagi depicts as having long been garbed in an invisible yellow raincoat that protects as it also stifles her: "The coat was always present, regardless of what other clothes I was or wasn't wearing…like a second skin." At first Rika searches for reasons to leave a job that puts her in proximity to a naked marble goddess that makes her self-conscious about the "many layers" covering her own body. Over time, the color of her raincoat fades from "blinding yellow" to "the hue of pre-griddle French toast" and Rika realizes that she's in love with Venus, who tells her of the emptiness she feels at being a perennial--but misunderstood--center of attention. But only when Rika finds herself challenged for Venus' love by another equally ardent "suitor" does she discover how much she and Venus have transformed each other. Yagi's characters and the world they inhabit are as inimitably charming as they are whimsical. Through them, the author explores weightier themes like loneliness, love, sexuality, and the meaning of art with flair, zest, and a refreshing touch of the surreal. A magical love story couched in absurdist fabulism. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.