The Cat Who Saved Books

On the sruface the story of a hokikimoro stay at home Japanese and his opening up to the outside world and friendships, but actually a meditation on books, reading, publishing and what it means to own a book, to read a book (ane even to be a book!)

This is a quite short, easy read with just a few characters, some simple (real world) locations but has surprising depths. Despite the short length this small cast is well drawn (there’s no wasted words here) and the cat, Tiger the Tabby has a lot of character and agency too.

It is very much an urban fantasy, with no attempt to explain anything - Rintaro our hero accepts the existence of a talking cat in about half a page and so do we, becuase the story itself has a lot to say. The fantasy labyrinths are well imagined and peopled by largely one-dimensional caricatures but they exist to make a point (about books) rather than be “real world” characters.

A short book with surprising depth, this would spark quite a lot of conversation amongst a book group, who we can largely assume are book lovers themselves. Books have great power - and so do book lovers!