A book about a cat and books – what could be better?

It was The Other Half who, late last week, pointed me toward the Waterstones website for The Cat Who Saved Books, a slender novel (224 pages) by Sosuke Natsukawa, a hospital doctor and writer in largely rural Nagano, Japan.

And since it involves a cat – and books – well, it was instantly ordered and arrived, very speedily yesterday morning, allowing a sense of perfect timing to offer a weekend of relief from the doom-scrolling.

 

Expertly translated by Louise Heal Kawai, the book tells the story of Rintaro Natsuki. After being orphaned when a very young child, he was taken in and looked after by his beloved grandfather, who ran a small, second-hand bookshop, Natsuki Books.

 

The novel opens with the teenage Rintaro at the funeral of his grandfather, who’s sudden (but apparently peaceful) death has left him in a void. A perfectly pleasant, but previously unknown aunt is going to give him a new home – away from this one – but he is having difficulty trying to sort out the emotions involved in all this.

 

To add to the complexity, the book-loving Rintaro is what the Japanese call hikikiomori – effectively, someone (largely male, but not exclusively) who has withdrawn from society and social engagement.

 

But shortly after the funeral, as Rintaro sits alone between all the books in the shop that is his grandfather’s legacy to him, an orange and yellow striped tabby appears in the shop and speaks to him.

 

The cat introduces itself as Tiger and explains that it (there is no pronoun for the character in the original Japanese) has come in order to recruit Rintaro to help him on a vital mission to save books.

 

And so they set off on their first adventure.

 

Japanese fiction involving cats is pretty much a genre in its own right – including, but not limited to, The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, I am a Cat by Sōseki Natsume, If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura and Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

 

These and others are on my own shelves – enough as to help me recognise the tone here.

 

This particular novel is Japanese magic realism – that’s a global concept, not just a Latin American one – and it is fascinating one.

 

On one level, it seems to have a naivety and, as countless reviewers have suggested, ‘charm’, that one could dismiss it quite easily. But it has some profoundly moving moments, together with an underlying quality that is faintly disturbing, in a way that you sense will live with you for some time.

 

And while the morality of Natsukawa’s tale is essentially simply, in other more philosophical ways, it is not.

 

It has a rather formal Japanese style, but is also deeply felt, though never mawkish.

 

I heartily recommend.