Book Review: The Travelling Cat Chronicles
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Snarky cat narrator with the greatest interspecies friendship! This is an excellent book!
Why I read this book: It was set in Japan and narrated by a cat. Two things I love.
As always when I review books, I’d like to share three good things and three bad things about this book. No book is perfect, and this book certainly isn’t (I did find some things that didn’t sit well with me) but despite that, it is still deserving of its five-star rating.
The good bits
Voice
The majority of this book is narrated by Nana the cat, who is a bit snarky and brutally honest and drags you into his world, and he doesn’t easily let you go.
A good story all around
This was just an enjoyable read start to finish. I never got bored while reading, I couldn’t stop reading, and to this book’s credit, I originally borrowed it from the library and read it, but now I want my own copy of it.
The friendship
The friendship between Satoru and Nana is just so wonderful and amazing and real–being a pet owner myself, it hits so close to home. I don’t want to say any more than that because that’s encroaching on spoiler territory, so instead, here’s a picture of my doggo watching Lord of the Rings.
Bonus because I just enjoyed this book so much: Noriko, who is Satoru’s aunt, is very blunt in her words and very socially awkward. As a girl with Asperger’s, I could really relate to her, especially as it came to her worrying about how her texts come off to other people and not having any tact when she refuses help from guests.
The not so good parts
The plot twist
Near the end of the book, we get a plot twist about Satoru’s true relationship with his parents, and it felt really unnecessary and kind of came out of nowhere. It would be one thing if it had been hinted at earlier in the book, but we got absolutely no setup for it before it happened. And the reason it was unnecessary is that we spent a few pages talking about it, but then the conclusion had nothing at all to do with that and went in a completely different direction. (I’m speaking generally here to avoid spoilers) By the time this plot twist was introduced, we already had plenty to carry the story forward into the denouement, so we really didn’t need this–it just felt like it was bogging down the story and making it more bloated than necessary.
Some of the characters didn’t have enough of a presence
Some characters, such as Kosuke and Sugi or Chikako and Noriko didn’t really get enough characterization for me to be able to differentiate between them, and as a result, they all just sort of blended together.
An editing mistake?
Going into nitpick territory here (because I honestly was having trouble thinking of a third thing). A small pet peeve of mine is when the author doesn’t trust me as a reader to understand and remember certain bits of information. This book commits that sin: on page 215, Noriko tells us
Her sister had always done her best for Noriko, and Noriko had tried to do the same for the son.
Then on page 218, we get almost the exact same piece of information presented pretty much verbatim to the first time:
At the very least, she wanted to do her very best for the son they (Satoru’s parents) had left behind, Satoru.
I don’t know if the author did this on purpose to try and convey Noriko’s scatterbrained way of thinking, but it didn’t work for me; it only drew me out of the story and made me flip back a few pages to check if I had maybe doubled back in the story without realizing it.
Despite that, I’d go so far as to say that this book gets five stars from me. It takes risks, it defies conventions previously set by similar books in the genre, and is one I’d want to read and reread again and again and shove in all my friends’ faces.
In conclusion, I’d recommend this book to fans of books set in foreign locales, books with unusual narrators, and books featuring strong friendships. The scenery descriptions as Nana and Satoru travel together are amazing, Nana’s voice is hilarious and snarky, and Satoru and Nana have the best animal-human friendship I’ve ever seen. I’d also venture that this book would be good for fans of the Warriors series by Erin Hunter who feel like they’re maybe outgrowing those books and want a more mature version of a cat story.
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Make it a good week, everyone, and I’ll see you next Sunday!
Corinne 乙女
