The Cat Who Saved Books Review
A lost and lonely high school student named Rintaro Natsuki is getting ready to move in with his aunt after the death of his grandfather. Instead of attending school, he decides to hide among the books in his grandfather’s bookshop, Natsuki Books. That is, until one day, he meets a talking tabby cat named Tiger, who implores Rintaro to help him save books. However unbelievable, Rintaro agrees to help Tiger and finds himself on a journey of self-discovery and healing. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa is a beautiful and engaging novel dedicated to the preservation of stories, no matter how old or difficult to read. Essentially it is a letter to readers imploring them not to give up on the power of books and the lessons that can be derived from them.
Earthlings By Sayaka Murata
After finishing Earthlings, all I could think was, "what the heck did I just read??" It was definitely not what I was expecting, especially with the cute cover of a hedgehog! I don't want to give anything away because it's a novel where readers are meant to be shocked and surprised; however, I will include content warnings at the bottom of the review because of the nature of the content.
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
The Memory Police was originally published in 1994 with the release of the English translation in 2019. The novel is set up in a dystopian setting and is written in the vein of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and George Orwell’s 1984. It is an intimate portrayal of love and communal trauma due to strange forces that wreak havoc on the residents of an island.
The community begins witnessing the disappearance of common objects. Birds, roses, and hats are among the first to disappear, but people’s memories of the disappeared also start to vanish. The novel’s protagonist is a young novelist who tries to preserve her fading memories. When she realizes her editor R is in trouble, she concocts a plan to hide him from a mysterious agency called The Memory Police. As more disappearances occur and life on the island becomes increasingly worse, the novelist desperately clings to her writing and R as a way of preserving her existence.