Clara Kumagai: "Catfish Rolling"

Title: Catfish Rolling [on Amazon | on Amazon UK | on Goodreads] (Note: this isn't technically an ARC review, since I got my copy from the US-based publisher Amulet Books/Abrams, but Zephyr/Head of Zeus/Bloomsbury issued the UK version back in March; the US version is coming out this month. Also, I decided to use the UK-version blurb because it's less spoilery)
Series: None
Author: Clara Kumagai [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Contemporary with a Twist
Year: 2023
Age: 14+
Stars: 5/5
Pros: Original, poetical, thought-provoking. Rich in Japanese mythology and culture without being overwhelming.
Cons: If you're the kind of reader who needs all the answers, you might get frustrated.
WARNING! The main character experiences the loss of a parent during an earthquake, and has to deal with her other parent's deteriorating memory. There's the (tame) prelude to a sex scene that happens offscreen.
Will appeal to: Those who can appreciate a quirky and quiet (yet engrossing) story about grief, memory and the relative quality of time.

Blurb: There's a catfish under the islands of Japan and when it rolls the land rises and falls. Sora hates the catfish whose rolling caused an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself. It destroyed her home and took her mother. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones - the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora is sensitive to the shifts, and her father recruits her help in exploring these liminal spaces. But it's dangerous there - and as she strays further inside in search of her mother, she finds that time distorts, memories fracture and shadows, a glimmer of things not entirely human, linger. After Sora's father goes missing, she has no choice but to venture into uncharted spaces within the time zones to find him, her mother and perhaps even the catfish itself... (Amazon)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on Edelweiss. Thanks to Amulet Books (Abrams) for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

LESS IS MORE

Books that deal with time paradoxes are my kryptonite (among other things, that is), and magical realism is one of my favourite genres, so I was looking forward to reading a story where the two things intertwined for a change - since most time paradoxes are usually encapsulated in a sci-fi narrative. I found the premise of this novel fascinating - an earthquake capable of breaking time and creating a series of  "fast zones" and "slow zones" with different rules, in one of which the protagonist's mother could perhaps still be trapped years after vanishing in the quake itself. The funny thing is, the story ended up going in a different direction that I had envisioned - until the last section, the effects of the fractured time were subtler than I expected, and the magical realism more subdued - and yet there was never a moment when I wished I was reading the kind of story that my imagination had conjured (the blurb has a certain ominous quality that the "zones" don't match, not in the way it leads you to believe. But the story doesn't need to venture into supernatural or horror territory to hold the reader's interest). [...]

MISSING LINK

As magical realism books are wont to do, Catfish Rolling uses a wild, exciting premise for a broader scope - or, in this case, a number of them. On a basic level, it's a coming-of-age story with a mixed race protagonist at its center: Sora began a new life in Japan with her Canadian father after her Japanese mother vanished in the earthquake during one of their visits, and seven years later, despite being genuinely connected to her mum's heritage, she still feels like she can never be Japanese enough to fit in. Also, when the story starts, she's just finished high school and doesn't know what to do with her life; her relationship with her dad is strained; her maybe-boyfriend is ready to move on without her; and she still hopes to be able to find her mother stranded in one of the most dangerous zones, where no one goes. Scratch that surface and you'll have a story about coping with grief, preserving memories as opposed to clinging to them, respecting/making peace with the environment we live in, being able to accept the things we can't change. Also, Catfish Rolling is a love letter to post-quake Japan, the fractured time a metaphor for the different ways (speeds) in which its people react to such a disaster - either preserving what's left of the past or leaving it behind in the effort to distance themselves from trauma. Seriously, I can't find anything wrong with this book - except maybe the sudden queer awakening and insta-connection between two characters, but it's a minor qualm. Steeped in folklore, visually stunning, full of heart and with poetical, gorgeous writing to boot, Catfish Rolling is the bridge between YA and adult literature we didn't know we needed.

For more Contemporary/Contemporary with a Twist books click here.