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Book Review

Review of If Cats Disappeared from the World, by Genki Kawamura

May 9, 2022

book, experiencing, fiction, Japan, literature, love, review, society

I love Japanese literature. Its themes are often focused, intelligent, quirky. I also love cats – indeed, for similar reasons, one may add! Combining the two, we get this review of If Cats Disappeared from the World, by Genki Kawamura.

You might also recall my review of The Travelling Cat Chronicles, by Hiro Arikawa, featuring a very similar theme. There are many similarities between the two novels, and if they weren’t both published in the same year, I’d be willing to ascribe the coincidence to an act of imitation instead.

So, what does a story like If Cats Disappeared from the World tell us?

Review of If Cats Disappeared — *What if Cats Disappeared? We don’t even want to think about it*

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Review of The Memory Police, by Yōko Ogawa

September 13, 2021

Book Review, Criticism

book, fiction, Japan, literature, review

2 comments

The Memory Police, by Yōko Ogawa, is basically a dystopian novel about a Japanese island where things “disappear” on an apparently random basis, and people must forget about them. If they can’t, no problem; Memory Police to the rescue. They make sure people forget the things that “disappeared” by forcing them to destroy these things.

All that sounds very dystopian, and it certainly is. There’s an undeniable aura of 1984 floating in Ogawa’s novel, but it’s much more subtle than that. That is good news, of course, but at times it also becomes problematic, for reasons that are both interesting and educational.

In other words, if you’re interested in dystopian narratives, you should pay close attention. Ogawa’s novel is an excellent example of how genre crossover can be problematic.

memory police — Secrecy, irrationality, submission. These and other elements of dystopian fiction are present in *The Memory Police*

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Review of Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino

May 31, 2021

Book Review, Criticism

absurd, book, fiction, imagination, literature, review

1 comments

So, what should a review of Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino be like? One thing’s for certain: It can’t be like any other review, because the novel (if one may still call it that) is like no other, either.

If that way of describing it sounds familiar, you’ve likely read my review of Confessions of a Mask, by Yukio Mishima. In that review, too, I had real trouble placing the work in a certain framework. Invisible Cities defies characterization. It’s what art should really be like: Focusing on affect, foregoing plot.

With these in mind, it will likely be no surprise to hear that I loved Calvino’s book. But reviews aren’t about what we like, but about why we like them. And so, in this review of Invisible Cities my goal – as with everything else I review – is ultimately to show you what the book feels like, rather than what it is.

review of invisible cities — *Invisible Cities* is a book that defies categorization

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