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A review by starkiwi
Catfish Rolling by Clara Kumagai
3.0
An interesting look into time itself. The contemporary novel told in an anecdotal voice was not the fantasy I was originally expecting. I thought I was going to be reading about a hero who braved mythology-inspired trials to journey to find the earthquake catfish and save Japan. What I read instead was a hero who was simply a girl and her trial was one of overcoming grief that so many people face. There was still plenty of mythology sprinkled in, which I really enjoyed. However, it was much more centred on the way time feels for people and how it is impacted by grief.
The writing itself is pretty surface-level. But Kumagai explores some deep themes through it. There was so much symbolism in mythology, grief, and time. In a way, the zones in the story are a metaphor for how time feels. In memories everything is slow; like in the slow zones. Then time speeds up or slows down for other things in life. All of this is based on the main character’s, Sora’s, evolution in dealing with the loss of her mother.
I also saw the zones as a drastic interpretation of liminal spaces, as they connect the present to the past - or even the future - in some ways. Both of these deep analyses of the zones I enjoyed exploring throughout the book.
Also enjoyable were the many Japanese anecdotes. The chapter titles in particular made it feel like reading a bunch of short stories. To learn how they matched up with the lunar calendar brought another level to the time symbolism. Minus, of course, the first and last chapters which together are the characters for Sora’s name.
This novel was not what I expected, but the deep exploration of how our perception of time is impacted by grief was very interesting to see explored and in some ways did make up for my bygone expectations.
The writing itself is pretty surface-level. But Kumagai explores some deep themes through it. There was so much symbolism in mythology, grief, and time. In a way, the zones in the story are a metaphor for how time feels. In memories everything is slow; like in the slow zones. Then time speeds up or slows down for other things in life. All of this is based on the main character’s, Sora’s, evolution in dealing with the loss of her mother.
I also saw the zones as a drastic interpretation of liminal spaces, as they connect the present to the past - or even the future - in some ways. Both of these deep analyses of the zones I enjoyed exploring throughout the book.
Also enjoyable were the many Japanese anecdotes. The chapter titles in particular made it feel like reading a bunch of short stories. To learn how they matched up with the lunar calendar brought another level to the time symbolism. Minus, of course, the first and last chapters which together are the characters for Sora’s name.
This novel was not what I expected, but the deep exploration of how our perception of time is impacted by grief was very interesting to see explored and in some ways did make up for my bygone expectations.