The Cat Who Saved Books is an engaging fantasy featuring books and literature and a squint-eyed look at humans by Sosuke Natsukawa. Released 7th Dec 2021 by HarperVia, it's 198 pages and is available in most formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is a multi-layered book. On the surface, it's a fairly simple story of a young man who is going through a difficult time after the sudden death of his grandfather and who, even before his bereavement, was beset by social anxiety. He's shocked when a talking tabby cat visits and asks for his help saving books. On a deeper level, the author has a lot to say about reading, and books, and the love of literature.
There is a lot of literature name-dropping here and especially for young adult readers, there are numerous great works of western and eastern literature mentioned which will give hours of further reading prompts.
The characterizations are very lightly rendered and most of them are not detailed at all. They're not all likeable, I found the titular cat, Tiger, to be supercilious and quite abrasive, for example. On the other hand, the author makes some valuable universal observations on the nature of friendship, interconnectedness, humanity, and what drives creativity. It makes an oddly endearing whole.
The translation from the original Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai was relatively seamless, and I found the translator's notes at the end of the book enlightening. It was easily understandable and relatable to readers whilst still maintaining a Japanese aesthetic.
The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 5 hours and 7 minutes and is capably narrated by Kevin Shen. He delineates the characters (of all ages, both sexes, plus cat) well and distinctly. There were only a couple places where the dialogue was so fast moving that I had trouble figuring out who was who in the dialogue scene. Sound and production quality are high throughout the recording.
Four stars. It's an undeniably odd but engaging story.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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