#BookReview: Luminous by Silvia Park

#BookReview: Luminous by Silvia ParkLuminous by Silvia Park
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, literary fiction, robots, science fiction
Pages: 400
Published by Simon & Schuster on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.

Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.

On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.

While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.

My Review:

They are all the children of the famous, failed neuroroboticist, Cho Yosep; Jun, Morgan, and Yoyo. But the childhood they shared was long ago, long enough that Jun and Morgan have had the chance to become adults, and to become estranged from their father and each other. While Yoyo, their android older brother, has been bought and sold and become and been changed, over and over again. None of them emerged from their childhoods, or even their sometimes barely-functioning adulthoods, unscarred.

In the reunified Korea of this future, the scars of the wars that brought reunification to pass are still evident everywhere – on the people, on the land and in the rising discontent on both sides of what was once the border between two sovereign nations whose unity seems in danger of fracturing again – sooner or later.

This is also a future where robots have become ubiquitous, filling roles that were once reserved for humans as servants, caregivers, children, friends, lovers. They are always helpful, forever loyal, and permanently second-class. Or worse. Or less. Or both.

Morgan makes robots. She’s a top designer for the pre-eminent robot design and manufacturing empire in the world. On the one hand, she believes that she’s carrying on the work her father abandoned. On another, she’s indulging her own fantasies through her work, and feeling guilty about both the indulgence and the deception.

And very much on her third, and possibly robotic, hand, she’s still both mourning and searching for the robot brother her father brought into their family – and mysteriously took away.

Jun protects robots, or at least he tries his best to in a world that sees them as useful until they’re not – and then they’re scrap. Jun is a detective in the underfunded, understaffed, underappreciated Seoul Police Department’s Robot Crimes Unit. He’s never gotten over the loss of his robot brother Yoyo, just as he’ll never be able to pay off the cybernetic body modifications that allowed him to survive the catastrophic injuries he received during the last war – and to live the truth he felt in his soul.

The frame of the story is one of Jun’s cases, an investigation into the disappearance of an elderly woman’s robot caregiver, the person Kim Sunduk has relied on for years to maintain her independence and her connection to the world. Connections that have been broken along with the woman’s heart.

Among these elements, the search for a missing caregiver that leads to an underworld of robot rage cages, a woman’s desire for love and approval, a man’s need to find the truths that were hidden in his childhood, lead, by a roundabout way, to the truth about Yoyo, truths about the war that no one wants to know, and truths about love that no one is willing to see.

Escape Rating B: Luminous is very much literary science fiction, which means the family is dysfunctional, none of the characters are happy, the story is steeped in tragedy and more is angsted about than done. Literary SF is not my favorite part of the genre, and I had some hesitation going into this one. In the end, it worked better than I expected because the police investigation provides a better framework than is usual in literary fiction upon which to hang an actual plot.

There are several ways of looking at this story – more than merely the three perspectives through which it is told. From one point of view, it seems as if Jun’s police investigation is the story, and it kind of is. But the story that is told isn’t merely about one robot’s disappearance. The story is about humans, and about their relationships with the robots that are now an integral part of society. From that starting point, it manages to dive into the relationships that robots have with each other – relationships that humans are entirely unaware of and do not even expect to exist. The detective story is Jun’s perspective, the robotic relationships are Yoyo’s, and are hidden every bit as much as Yoyo himself has been.

While Morgan’s strained human relationships and her clandestine creation of her own robot companion raise questions about whether the advent of robots has furthered the fracturing of human-to-human relationships.

I was certainly caught up in Luminous as I was reading it, but now that I’ve turned the final page I have some mixed feelings about parts. One is my own problem, in that I wish I knew a lot more about Korean history up until now because I believe the conditions of this near-future would have had more impact if I had. At the same time, parts of the situation felt familiar because the human condition in general is simply what it is. War is hell, war is always hell, what gives the war scenes in this story their resonance is that we are seeing things through their perspectives, particularly Jun’s and Yoyo’s.

It feels like the heart of the story is wrapped around the relationships between humans and robots, but because we get there through the police investigation, a lot of what we see is that humans treat robots the way that humans treat any population they see as ‘less than’ whatever group is dominant. It’s also not a surprise that the robots who get destroyed by violence are mostly female-bodied. That’s it’s female-bodied robots who become caregivers and servants, and that male-bodied Yoyo is turned into a weapon.

And that that easy dichotomy is the simplest thing about relationships between humans and robots, and that everything under that iceberg tip is considerably more complex.

After turning the final page, I ended up looking back at some other recent books about human/robotic relations in order to get a better handle on why some bits seemed rather familiar, and the one I believe Luminous most reminds me of is Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner because it also tells a story about human attempts to program robots to do their dirty work for them, and how the robots themselves evolve in considerably more complex – and humane – directions than was originally intended. There are elements of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton and  C. Robert Cargill’s Day Zero here also, and if that’s the part of Luminous that grabbed your attention, all are worth a read.

One final (final) note, Luminous is the author’s debut novel, and she kept me engaged in this story, in a part of the genre I don’t normally tackle, from beginning to end. I’m definitely looking forward to whatever she comes up with next!

#BookReview: The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

#BookReview: The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, translated by Jesse KirkwoodThe Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, Jesse Kirkwood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, translated fiction, world literature
Pages: 272
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on February 25, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Seven struggling customers are given the unique opportunity to take home a “blanket cat” . . . but only for three days, the time it’ll take to change their lives.
A peculiar pet shop in Tokyo has been known to offer customers the unique opportunity to take home one of seven special cats, whose “magic” is never promised, but always received. But there are rules: these cats must be returned after three days. They must eat only the food supplied by the owner, and they must travel to their new homes with a distinctive blanket.
In The Blanket Cats, we meet seven customers, each of whom is hoping a temporary feline companion will help them escape a certain reality, including a couple struggling with infertility, a middle-aged woman on the run from the police, and two families in very different circumstances simply seeking joy.
But like all their kind, the “blanket cats” are mysterious creatures with unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn’t really what they need. Three days may not be enough to change a life. But it might just change how you see it.

My Review:

The idea seems a bit, well, absurd – but in a good way. That a person would ‘rent’ a cat for three days and then return the cat. Actually, that’s not the absurd part. There are lots of reasons why someone would want a cat as a short term rental, and quite a few of them are covered in this collection.

A family who wants to give a visiting elderly relative one last good memory of the household by temporarily replacing a cat who passed away months ago. A person who lives in a pet-free apartment who takes their vacations with a cat because they aren’t permitted to keep one at home. A family pretending all is well when it really, really isn’t. A child who needs a friend and companion who won’t judge – unlike everyone around him.

Still, the idea of this loosely linked collection should seem familiar, as there are suddenly a lot of similar books available, translated from the original Japanese or Korean. The ideas are similar, the stories are a bit of magical realism on four paws, about lives that are changed for the better with the introduction of a magical cat. Or even just a bit of magic, as is the case with the best known book of this type, Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

Generally speaking, I have at least liked all of the books of this type I have picked up so far. Some more than others, of course, but generally have closed the book with a smile on my face even if there’s also a bit of a tear in my eye. And that’s true with or without the inclusion of a cat or two.

Because of the cats, however, this particular set of stories at first seemed a lot like We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, because the ‘Blanket Cats’ of these stories are also short-term placements – although there’s no hint of a prescription.

Instead, the blanket cats are trained to be rented by one person or family after another, able to feel ‘at home’ wherever they are placed as long as they have their own personal ‘comfort blanket’ and their prescribed diet. It shouldn’t work, and I’ll admit to wondering if it would in real life, but as a story convention it’s enough.

However, the cats really aren’t. Enough that is. Because in the individual stories it feels like the individuals and their situations are beyond saving and the poor cat gets caught in the middle. These kinds of stories are often ‘sad fluff’ in that there’s a lot of grief in the beginning but part of the magic, with or without cat, is that the change in perspective brought by the cat or the magic or both allows the humans to see things a bit differently and things do get better.

The stories in this collection just felt very, very sad, and there wasn’t that same catharsis that there was in We’ll Prescribe You a Cat or The Full Moon Coffee Shop.

Escape Rating C: I left this collection feeling even sadder than I began. As I wasn’t feeling well to begin with, this may have been the wrong book at the wrong time for this reader. And I’m sad about that, too.

#AudioBookReview: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

#AudioBookReview: Orbital by Samantha HarveyOrbital by Samantha Harvey
Narrator: Sarah Naudi
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from library
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, science fiction
Pages: 207
Length: 5 hours and 7 minutes
Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on December 5, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour.
A book of wonder, Orbital is nature writing from space and an unexpected and profound love letter to life on Earth

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

My Review:

It begins in the morning, as all of their alarm clocks wake them for a brand new day. But all of those things are a bit, well, liminal, as day, night, and even sleep are all a bit nebulous and artificial for the six residents of the International Space Station.

The International Space Station, as photographed by Space Shuttle Atlantis.

The alarm clocks are real. Electronic, but still real. It’s the rest of the circumstances that are a bit adrift. Humans are tied to the 24-hour rotation of the Earth – but the ISS isn’t ON Earth. It’s rotating the planet in Low Earth orbit, 250 miles above the surface, 16 orbits per ‘day’.

So it’s artificially morning as decreed by ground control, an attempt to keep the humans aboard the ISS tethered to the planet of their origin. For the people involved, that tethering gets more than a bit unmoored as their mission goes on.

Because they experience MANY dawns every single orbit. It might not even be daylight under them or over them when they wake up – and even if it is it won’t be very soon.

But throughout the meticulous structure of their days, from observation to experimentation to being themselves part of the experiment of life in space, the planet and the life upon it is never far from their thoughts – even when it seems like it is.

This crew, astronauts Anton, Chie, Nell, and Shaun along with cosmonauts Pietro and Roman, may be the biggest part of this story but not the only part. Because they are all reflecting upon the life below them, their personal lives and the life of the planet, even as they look outward towards the future that has specifically just passed them by, literally as well as figuratively, as they and the rest of the world watch as four astronauts in a space capsule head on their outward journey back to the place where many of their own dreams of space began.

Escape Rating C+: I picked this entirely out of curiosity. Because it’s been labelled as science fiction but it won the Booker Prize, one of the big literary awards. In general, SF and Fantasy are the red-headed stepchildren of the literary world and just don’t win the big literary awards like the Booker. SF wins SF awards, and literary fiction wins the Booker.

Having finished this in audio, I’m at least clear on my answer to the conundrum. Orbital is very much in the Literary SF tradition, with the emphasis firmly on the literary in senses both good and less so.

So if you’re looking at this as an example of SF, it’s really not. If you’re interested in literary SF there are better examples. I’m particularly thinking of Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea. If this makes you curious about SF and are looking for something that has a bit of this feeling but also has a real, honest-to-goodness PLOT, take a look at Becky Chambers’ To Be Taught, If Fortunate, which is also a love letter to Earth and the life upon it while still managing to GET somewhere as it goes.

The audio narration by Sarah Naudi was utterly lovely, and does account for the plus in the grade. This is a relatively short book, and the beauty of the narration was enough to carry me through.

I liked the idea of this story, because space travel fascinates me. I loved the feeling of being in the astronauts’ and cosmonauts’ heads as they go about their work and the world revolves below them instead of underneath them. The prose is luminous and frequently rises to the poetic.

But there’s just not enough there to coalesce into an actual story. It’s more like a day in the life, and the whole point of each individual day in the life of the residents of the International Space Station is that it’s not supposed to be all that exciting. As one of them jokes, “If you’re an astronaut you’d rather not ever be news.” And he’s very much right.

In the end, I was left with the feeling that Orbital does its very best to never allow its bare scrim of a plot to get in the way of its poetry. Which made the individual observations lovely but does not a good story make. Nor does it make for good science fiction.

As always, your reading mileage may vary.

A- #BookReview: The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

A- #BookReview: The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse KirkwoodThe Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #2) by Hisashi Kashiwai, Jesse Kirkwood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, foodie fiction, literary fiction, magical realism, translated fiction, world literature
Series: Kamogawa Food Detectives #2
Pages: 224
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is the second book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Kamogawa Food Detectives series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps recreate them...
Chef Nagare and his daughter Koishi serve their customers more than delicious food at their Kamogawa Diner down a quiet street in Kyoto. They can help recreate meals from their customers’ most treasured memories. Through ingenious investigations, these “food detectives” untangle flavors and pore through old shopping lists to remake unique dishes from the past.
From the swimmer who misses his father’s lunchbox to the model who longs for fried rice from her childhood, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect…
A beloved bestseller in Japan, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is a tender and healing novel that celebrates the power of community and delicious food.

My Review:

The premise of this series is simple, beautiful and TRUE in all the best ways.

Hunger may be the best sauce, but nostalgia comes a close second. The difference is that hunger makes everything taste better – while nostalgia can only be satisfied by the correct combination of flavors and smells. The one that takes us back to the original that we remember so fondly and are able to reproduce so rarely.

It’s that reproduction – and the memories that come along with it – that makes this series both fascinating and heartwarming.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives are Chef Nagare and his adult daughter Koishi. Their little hole in the wall restaurant in Kyoto is a place that only the locals know. There’s no sign outside and they do almost no advertising. What little advertising they do isn’t even about the restaurant.

Their one line ad in a gourmet magazine proclaims, “We Find Your Food!”, which is exactly what they do. The clients for their food detection service come because they are desperate to recreate a taste – and the feelings that go along with it – that they barely remember but can’t let go of.

That they succeed isn’t magic – but it is. All it takes is a story and a fading memory and a whole lot of detection on the part of Chef Nagare – as well as a whole lot of taste-testing on the part of Koishi – to recreate just what the client has been searching for.

Each case – each story – is just a bit different. The process is the same, but the results are as variable as the clientele. Along the way, linking the separate vignettes into a harmonious whole, is the story of Nagare and Koishi, their banter, their gentle teasing, their excellent father-daughter relationship – and the way they include the missing member of their family, Nagare’s late wife Kikuko – in a way that demonstrates love and care and gentle grief and moving on all at the same time.

There may not be magic in the fantasy or magical realism sense in this book or this series, but the story is absolutely magical all the same.

Escape Rating A-: This is the series that got me firmly hooked on these cozy mystery/fantasy/magical realism type stories (the ones that trace their origin inspiration to Before the Coffee Gets Cold). After devouring this book in one sitting, I’m now certain that this is my favorite of them all in spite of the fact that nearly all of the others, there’s not even a hint of any actual magic.

It still seems like magic, but I think that magic can be put down to two factors – or at least this is how it’s working for me. One factor is the background story, the relationship between Nagare and his adult daughter Koishi and that it does work. Their relationship is just plain good in a way that seems magical because I honestly can’t imagine ever living with my parents as an adult and having them actually treat me as a functional adult. We weren’t that fortunate – although Koishi is.

We don’t get a lot of their daily lives in the spaces between their customers’ stories, but the bits we do get seem to be building on each other in a way that I simply find charming and heartwarming and I hope that other readers do as well.

As much as I enjoy the individual customers’ stories, Nagare and Koishi are the people carrying the story overall, and the other part of what I love is that the ‘magic’ of their food detective business comes down to good interview techniques on Koishi’s part, good investigative skills on Nagare’s part, a willingness to chase down any clue as well as, of course, Nagare’s skill in the kitchen and his willingness to experiment as often as it takes to get the dish exactly right.

The stories wouldn’t be half as much fun if they could just snap their fingers and make it happen. The breathless anticipation on the part of the customer – and the nervous worry on the part of the chef and the detective – make each customer’s story really pay off for both them AND the reader.

I do enjoy the individual stories, but without Nagare and Koishi to tie it all together the books wouldn’t work nearly as well, at least for this reader.

I’ll admit that I’ve been salivating for this book since the minute I finished the first book in the series, The Kamogawa Food Detectives. I mean that both literally and figuratively, as the food described within both stories as well as their presentation is absolutely mouth-watering. So don’t go into this series hungry. I mean it! You have been warned!

IMHO, this was totally worth the wait. I loved it and ate it up in one sitting. I’m just happy that there are several more books in the series in the original Japanese, so I have hopes that more will be translated – preferably as soon as possible!

#BookReview: The Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiragi, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

#BookReview: The Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiragi, translated by Jesse KirkwoodThe Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiragi, Jesse Kirkwood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, world literature
Pages: 208
Published by Grand Central Publishing on September 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

From acclaimed Japanese author Sanaka Hiigari comes a heartwarming, life-affirming novel about a magical photo studio, where people go after they die to view key moments from their life—and relive one precious memory before they pass into the afterlife.
The hands and pendulum of the old wooden clock on the wall were motionless. Hirasaka cocked his head to listen, but the silence inside the photo studio was almost deafening. His leather shoes sank softly into the aging red carpet as he strode over to the arrangement of flowers on the counter and carefully adjusted the angle of the petals...
This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaki, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard.
Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time—to see their entire life flash before their eyes via Mr. Hirasaki's "spinning lantern of memories."
We meet Hatsue, a ninety-two year old woman who worked as a nursery teacher, the rowdy Waniguchi, a yakuza overseer in his life who is also capable of great compassion, and finally Mitsuru, a young girl who has died tragically young at the hands of abusive parents. 
Sorting through the many photos of their lives, Mr. Hirasaki also offers guests one guests a second a chance to travel back in time to take a photo of one particular moment in their lives that they wish to cherish in a special way.
Full of charm and whimsy, The Lantern of Lost Memories will sweep you away to a world of nostalgia, laughter, and love.

My Review:

If it’s true that your life passes before your eyes when you die, then The Lantern of Lost Memories is the story of how that precious reel of memories gets made – and more importantly, what that reel is made OF.

Mr. Hirasaki is the proprietor of a very special photo studio, a waystation on the journey between life and whatever comes after. Unlike the people who visit him, Mr. Hirasaki doesn’t remember who he was before he died. He also doesn’t know what comes after, because he’s stuck at his shop. It’s possible that he’ll move on someday, but he’s not eager to move on – at least not yet.

He’s still hoping that someone will come along who knew him in life, and can fill in the blank pages of his own memory. While he’s waiting, he helps others fill in theirs.

The story here is made up of three stories that interconnect – even if the individuals who have arrived at Mr. Hirasaki’s shop are not aware of it as they pass through. And neither is he.

From 92-year-old nursery teacher Hatsue, to the 47-year-old yakuza supervisor Waniguchi, to young Mitsuru, the process is the same. Just before each of his clients arrives, Mr. Hirasaki receives a shipment of photographs from the client’s life, one bundle for each year.

Needless to say, Hatsue’s box is considerably heavier than the others – but that’s as it should be.

For each person, the job is for the client to go through the photos and choose one picture from each year of their lives to represent that year. From those photos, the proprietor creates a lantern, perhaps a bit like an old fashioned zoetrope, and certainly a work of art.

The key part of each story isn’t the lantern – it’s the process of creation and the memory that goes into it. Each of the adults has one picture, an often referred to and much-loved picture – that is faded and worn because it’s been handled so often, even if just in memory. To refresh that one, precious photo, Mr. Hirasaki takes them back to the day it was taken, and spends 24 hours there with them where they can observe but not interact, refresh the photo, and tell him all about the specific memory, the day it happened, and the life that was wrapped around it.

None of which exactly works for the very young, abused to the point of absolute fear and almost complete silence, Mitsuru. It shouldn’t be her time to pass through his shop. But no one should have to go back to the situation she has only temporarily escaped from.

Which brings the story back around, full-circle, to the place it began, with Mr. Hirasaki, his shop of memories, and the reason he has none himself.

Escape Rating B: I’ve been making my way through a whole series of books very much like this one. They follow a similar pattern in which the location is magical or magic-adjacent, the function of that place allows for a semi-detached proprietor to serve a variety of people whose stories function as a series of vignettes within an overarching theme. Some of those stories have happy endings, but the overall tone is often bittersweet, as those vignettes are little slices of life – and not all lives are happy ones.

On a kind of magical realism spectrum, The Lantern of Lost Memories is closest to The Dallergut Dream Department Store and Water Moon, where the location is fully magical and adjacent to the real world but not part of it. A place that can only be found if all the circumstances are met, and if it needs you as much as you need it.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold and The Full Moon Coffee Shop take place  in locations where there is a bit of magic but are fully a part of the ‘real world’, while What You are Looking For Is In the Library and The Kamogawa Food Detectives are fully ‘real’ and easy enough to find and yet, something magical happens out of their very normalcy.

As I said, I’ve been reading books like this a lot this year, and I have more coming. They are all very much hot cocoa, warm fuzzy blankets and warm purring cat kind of books. Not too long, not too short and just right all the way around.

This one tripped me up just a bit, as I was looking for that interconnectedness and wasn’t in the least sure that I found it – not until the very end. It helps to make this story make more sense if, as part of one’s willing suspension of disbelief, the reader also sets aside the idea that time is linear – because that may be our reality but isn’t what’s happening here.

In these interconnected stories, time is a möbius strip that turns back on itself until the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. Then it makes a whole lot more sense AND gets that much more magical, all at the same time.

#BookReview: We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda

#BookReview: We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison ShimodaWe'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, E. Madison Shimoda
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, translated fiction, world literature
Pages: 304
Published by Berkley on March 8, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A cat a day keeps the doctor away…Discover the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel that has become an international sensation in this utterly charming, vibrant celebration of the healing power of cats.Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.Throughout the pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a hardened bag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha finds herself unable to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients navigate their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.

My Review:

Kyoto’s Kokora Clinic for the Soul can only be found if you really, really need it. You’ll probably only even hear the rumor about its existence – and a rather confused and confusing rumor at that – if you are in need of the service they provide.

If there’s an ache in your soul – even if you think that ache is in your mind, and you have the patience to circle the block and not let yourself get convinced that you’re, pardon the expression, barking up the wrong tree, you’ll see a poorly maintained building in the shadows behind newer and much taller ones, down an alleyway that can be found “east of Takoyakushi Street, south of Tominokoji Street, west of Rokkaku Street, north of Fuyacho Street, Nakagyō Ward, Kyoto.”

It’s the place where the young and slightly scatterbrained Dr. Nikké and his taciturn receptionist Chitose will prescribe you a cat for whatever ails you.

Shuta Kagawa is depressed and miserable. His job at a seemingly successful financial management firm is actually hell on Earth, with an absolute demon of a boss. (Not literally. Probably not literally. Comparisons could certainly be drawn). He wants to quit, but he doesn’t want to disappoint his parents. He wants a real life instead of a sentence to purgatory. He thinks that the Kokora Clinic provides some kind of mental health therapy.

Which they do, just not in any way that he imagines. They prescribe him a cat named Bee. And she gives him something to focus on besides his own angst. She changes his life – sometimes willingly on his part, but mostly not so much – and the lives of everyone around him. That the people around him at the end are absolutely NOT the same people around him at the beginning is just part of his cure.

Shuta and Bee’s story is the first thread of a delightful tapestry, that gets woven, one prescription – and one cat – at a time, by two practitioners who know just what it means to leave a part of your soul behind.

Escape Rating B: There are a LOT of books similar to this one, where the central location is mysterious or mythical or just difficult to find, where that place connects a series of stories that at first don’t seem connected at all, where there’s just a touch of magic or magical realism, where the overall experience ends up being a bit bittersweet. Not all of the vignettes have happy endings, but they all have cathartic ones.

I picked this up because I LOVE those kinds of books, and this one has cats, which is always a win for me. Certainly the idea of being “prescribed” a cat caught my imagination, as it did several people who saw this title in my Stacking the Shelves and Sunday Posts where this title was featured. Because really, a prescription for a cat – complete with cat! What’s not to love?

But, if the concept behind the prescription seems a bit familiar, that’s only because it has become so through books such as Before the Coffee Gets Cold and many others. Of the ones I’ve read so far, this reminds me of the most is The Full Moon Coffee Shop, so if you liked that you’ll probably like this and vice versa.

What makes this one work is the way that the prescriptions all have different results. Shuta Kagawa does, in the end, adopt Bee. They rescue each other, which is what often happens with companion animals who become part of our lives and hearts. It’s kind of what we expect in ALL the stories  – but that’s not what actually happens.

In other cases, the cat opens people’s eyes to their own situations. The cat doesn’t need rescuing, it’s the human who needs a different perspective – even if that perspective is that it’s time to let go – whether of a human relationship that isn’t working or holding on too tightly to the grief over the loss of a pet. Different situations require different forms of closure, after all.

The magical realism magic of this story rests in the disappearing/reappearing clinic and its origin story, which the reader is led to slowly and carefully over the course of the book. But the fun magic is that Dr. Nikké’s and receptionist Chitose’s labor of love for both cats and humans becomes so successful over this course of prescriptions that it looks like they’ll be keeping their doors open – when they can be found at all – for a long time to come.

#BookReview: The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

#BookReview: The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse KirkwoodThe Full Moon Coffee Shop (The Full Moon Coffee Shop, #1) by Mai Mochizuki, Jesse Kirkwood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, world literature
Pages: 228
Published by Ballantine Books on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Translated from the Japanese bestseller, this charming and magical novel, inspired by the myth of cats returning favors to those who care for them, reminds us that it’s never too late to follow our stars.
In Japan cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they’ll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon. This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and seemingly appears at random to adrift young people at crucial junctions in their lives.
It’s also run by talking cats.
While customers at the Full Moon Coffee Shop partake in cakes, coffees, and teas, the cats also consult them on their star charts, offer cryptic wisdom, and let them know where their lives have veered off course—because every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost. And for a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. After all, there is a reason the shop appeared to each of them…

My Review:

It will not surprise any reader of my reviews that this book had me at cats. And it was expecting something a but cutesy, but also heartwarming and charming because a) cats and b) this book is part of the recent trend of interconnected vignette novels that kicked off – or at least into high gear – with Before the Coffee Gets Cold – a trend which I’ve been enjoying very much.

So I was expecting a similar combination of magical realism with a touch of cozy fantasy and/or cozy mystery, just with a whole lot of cats.

I fully admit I was NOT expecting the astrology bits, but we all get our paradigm shifts where we find them and the logic of what causes them doesn’t have to be the same for everyone. So even though the astrology explanations didn’t work for me except as a metaphor, as a metaphor they worked just fine.

What got me in the heart was the way that the story managed to come full circle and tie itself up with a truly beautiful bow. If, as this book posits albeit a bit sideways, if the Rainbow Bridge touches down on Earth  when the moon is full so that the cats we have loved and cared for have a chance to give us a bit of a push when we need it – I’m there for it.

Escape Rating B: At first, the stories seem a bit random, as they often do in this kind of book. I’m thinking of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Dallergut Dream Department Store, What You are Looking For Is In the Library, and my personal favorite, The Kamogawa Food Detectives.

When the two cats deliver some rather tough love to the down-on-her-luck, has-been writer, it’s not just her life that needs to change. The following stories connect back to her, and to a time in her life when her dreams were still in front of her.

And they could be again if she just takes the more practical aspects of the cats’ advice. As she does.

What I wasn’t expecting – but should have because these books often work similarly – was that all the people involved remember her, remember her fondly, were inspired by her in their own ways, and were part of an event in their brief time together that affected them all deeply even if they didn’t specifically remember it.

It’s that event that leads back to the cats, and to a truth about animal companions regardless of species. That it’s not just that we rescue them, as this teacher turned scriptwriter and her students once did. It’s that they rescue us as well.

And it’s that truth that makes the whole story not just work, but work with a smile and just a touch of a tear at its just so delicious bittersweet ending.

A- #AudioBookReview: More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, translated by Eric Ozawa

A- #AudioBookReview: More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, translated by Eric OzawaMore Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #2) by Satoshi Yagisawa, Eric Ozawa
Narrator: Catherine Ho
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Amazon, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: books and reading, literary fiction, relationship fiction, world literature
Series: Days at the Morisaki Bookshop #2
Pages: 176
Length: 5 hours and 21 minutes
Published by Harper Perennial, HarperAudio on July 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

In this charming and emotionally resonant follow up to the internationally bestselling Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa paints a poignant and thoughtful portrait of life, love, and how much books and bookstores mean to the people who love them.
Set again in the beloved Japanese bookshop and nearby coffee shop in the Jimbocho neighborhood of Toyko, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop deepens the relationship between Takako, her uncle Satoru , and the people in their lives. A new cast of heartwarming regulars have appeared in the shop, including an old man who wears the same ragged mouse-colored sweater and another who collects books solely for the official stamps with the author’s personal seal.
Satoshi Yagisawa illuminates the everyday relationships between people that are forged and grown through a shared love of books. Characters leave and return, fall in and out of love, and some eventually die. As time passes, Satoru, with Takako’s help, must choose whether to keep the bookshop open or shutter its doors forever. Making the decision will take uncle and niece on an emotional journey back to their family’s roots and remind them again what a bookstore can mean to an individual, a neighborhood, and a whole culture.

My Review:

At the end of the first book, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, it seems as if life is on the upswing for first-person narrator Takako, her eccentric uncle Satoru, and his used bookshop in the Jimbocho neighborhood of Tokyo, a place that is positively chock full of used book stores.

As this second book opens, life seems to be going well for Takoko. She’s moving forward with her life, has a job that she enjoys, a solid and happy and solidly happy romantic relationship, her uncle is happily complaining – which is his way – her aunt seems to have made peace with her uncle and their relationship seems stable and happy.

Even the bookshop seems to be doing well.

Howsomever, just as the first book started out as sad fluff, with Takoko in the depths of depression and eventually working her way out through working at the bookshop, rekindling her childhood closeness with her uncle, rediscovering the joys of reading and slowly becoming involved with the life of the neighborhood, these “more days” at the bookshop transit the path in the other direction.

At the beginning, all seems to be well. But as Takoko observes each time she returns to the bookshop to spend time and help out – the reality is that happiness is slipping out from under them.

Some parts of the various situations can be fixed – but not all of them. And not the saddest of all.

Escape Rating A-: I picked up More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop because, having fallen in love with the first book, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, I wanted more, well, days at the Morisaki Bookshop.

And that’s exactly what I got – and it was beautiful. I’m very glad that I read it – or rather that I gave in to temptation and listened to Catherine Ho as the voice of Takako again because she does an excellent job of embodying the character.

Like the previous book, this is not a story of great doings and big happenings. It’s a quiet story, a book of slices of life, specifically the lives of Takako, her family, her friends, and the Morisaki Bookshop which so much of those lives revolve around.

But, and this is a bit of a trigger warning, the progression of this story is the opposite of the first. It starts high and ends low – even though the epilogue does a good job of letting the reader know that life moves on – even from the depths of grief.

Howsomever, the depths of that grief are very deep indeed. Especially in the excellent audio recording, where it feels as if it’s Takako’s voice telling you just how heartbroken so many of the characters are. It’s very effective, and very affecting. Readers who are already grieving someone close to their hearts will find that part of the story gut-wrenching, cathartic, or both – as this reader certainly did.

So maybe don’t listen to that part while you’re driving because the urge to cry right along with Takako is pretty much irresistible.

That being said, the whole thing is lovely and charming and filled to the brim with the joy of books and reading and the people who love both – just as the first book was. I’m as happy I read this second book as I was the first – even if it did leave me a bit weepy.

This series, along with Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Kamogawa Food Detectives, What You are Looking For Is In the Library, The Dallergut Dream Department Store and the upcoming We’ll Prescribe You a Cat are part of a marvelously charming and extremely cozy trend of magical – sometimes with real magic – comfort reads and I’m enjoying it tremendously.

If you’re looking for some cozy, comforting reads, you might want to snuggle up with some of these books too!

#BookReview: Dear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn

#BookReview: Dear Edna Sloane by Amy ShearnDear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: epistolary novels, literary fiction
Pages: 250
Published by Red Hen Press on April 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Edna Sloane was a promising author at the top of her game. Her debut novel was an instant classic and commercial success, vaulting her into the heady echelons of the 1980s New York City lit scene. Then she disappeared and was largely forgotten. Decades later, Seth Edwards is an aspiring writer and editor who feels he’s done all the right things to achieve literary success, but despairs that his dream will be forever out of reach. He becomes obsessed with the idea that if he can rediscover Sloane, it will make his career. His search for her leads to unexpected places and connections, and the epistolary correspondence that ensues makes up this book, a novel infused with insights and meditations about what our cultural obsession with the "next big thing" does to literature, and what it means to be a creative person in the world.

My Review:

There are plenty of variations on the saying that “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” (I’ve always thought this was Hemingway, but a bit of Google-Fu turns up an earlier attribution to sports writer “Red” Smith in 1949.

But the story in this book has things a bit differently – at least from a certain literary point of view.

Writ-ING is actually easy, full stop. Lots of people do it every day in one form or another. We may not write letters much anymore, but we “tweet” tweets – or we did when it was called ‘Twitter’. Do people now ‘ex’ on X? (Just those types of digressions are common in the correspondence that makes up the bulk of this epistolary novel.)

Whatever tweets are called these days, we also write emails, memos and reports, caption Facebook and Instagram posts and text each other incessantly. It’s all writ-ING. Which doesn’t mean that any of it is either good or effective – just that it happens a lot more than we think it does.

But we’re not writ-ERS, and that difference is a big part of what this book is exploring.

Once upon a time in the 1980s, Edna Sloane was a young WRITER, a debut novelist, a literary wunderkind, whose first novel, An Infinity of Traces, took the book world by storm and became an instant classic.

Then she disappeared from the scene – at least the literary scene. The speculation was endless – even without social media as we know it today. Whether Edna Sloane was murdered, kidnapped, walked away on her own recognizance or got locked up in an institution of one kind or another, the woman was nowhere to be found.

Agatha Christie famously disappeared in 1926 but she was found in a spa hotel two weeks later. Edna Sloane wasn’t found at all until a junior editor at an online literary magazine tracked her down in 2017.

Dear Edna Sloane, the book, is the cumulated correspondence between the titular novelist, now nearing 60, and Seth Edwards, the young would-be writer who pretends he’s pursuing the elusive Sloane for an article to save his job. What he’s really doing is pouring out all of his own angst about just how difficult it is to be a WRITER no matter how desperately he tries to hold onto his dream.

And Edna answers. Not with platitudes, but with truth – the kind of truths that her own novel was so rightfully famous for. Seth’s quest for Edna brings Edna back into the world – even as it echoes the plot of her famous novel and pushes him out of it.

Escape Rating B-: There’s a life imitates art imitates life aspect to this story that draws the reader in more than one might expect – certainly more than this reader expected. At the same time, it is also very, ‘lit-ficcy’ in that there’s not a lot of action but there is a ton of angst.

That it doesn’t wallow in itself or its angst – in other words, that it goes about its business without getting carried away endlessly – makes it a relatively short bit of literary fiction, and the quest to find Edna Sloane carries the story along even though the events that take place around it fade into the background more than a bit – much as Seth does in the end.

What Seth’s side of the correspondence brings to the table – or screen – is his desperation to hang onto a dream that is slipping away. Seth is caught on the horns of the dilemma about the circus worker stuck with the job of cleaning up elephant poop who won’t leave because he’d have to give up show business.

Edna, on the other hand, brings back the heady, glorious days of the literary scene in the 1980s, even as she puts perspective on just how naive and innocent she was in her 20s – just as Seth is now. She also stands at the crossroads of her own dilemmas. Then, it was about balancing so-called ‘real life’ with her burning need to write – and being forced to choose and adopt a persona that would get her through the day and get the work of living done.

As well as discovering that she could either be feted for the work or do the work when it came to writing, but not both. Writing was easy, but being a writer in the sense of being part of the star-making machinery and finding a way to support herself as a writer was damn hard and in the end she set it aside even if that was not what she planned or desired.

And yes, there’s plenty about the emotional labor of women in that part of her life but it’s not the whole of the thing at all.

Still, Edna needs her writing to reconcile her past – and even more so the effect of her father’s past as a Survivor (of Auschwitz) – whether she’s feted or celebrated for it or not. So she’s never really stopped, even when it seemed like she really, truly, seriously had stopped. She stopped being ‘a writer’ but that vein was still open so she never stopped writing after all.

Grade A #BookReview: A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke

Grade A #BookReview: A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas WesterbekeA Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fantasy, magical realism, literary fiction
Pages: 399
Published by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster on April 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue meets Life of Pi in this dazzlingly epic debut that charts the incredible, adventurous life of one woman as she journeys the globe trying to outrun a mysterious curse that will destroy her if she stops moving.
Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death.
When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days nor return to a place where she’s already been.
From the scorched dunes of the Calashino Sand Sea to the snow-packed peaks of the Himalayas; from a bottomless well in a Parisian courtyard, to the shelves of an infinite underground library, we follow Aubry as she learns what it takes to survive and ultimately, to truly live. But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s...
Fiercely independent and hopeful, yet full of longing, Aubry Tourvel is an unforgettable character fighting her way through a world of wonders to find a place she can call home. A spellbinding and inspiring story about discovering meaning in a life that seems otherwise impossible, A Short Walk Through a Wide World reminds us that it’s not the destination, but rather the journey—no matter how long it lasts—that makes us who we are.

My Review:

The title is only half right. The world that Aubry Tourvel walks through is indeed wide, but her walk is far, far from short – especially from her own perspective.

That walk begins in 1885, when Aubry is all of 9 years old, the protected and spoiled youngest child of middle-class parents in Paris, France. Whether her condition is caused by a mysterious puzzle ball, her unwillingness to sacrifice it, or merely the whims of fate is never 100% certain – and it doesn’t need to be.

However the malady, or perhaps curse is a better term, was visited upon her, nevertheless one evening Aubry sits down at the dinner table and starts bleeding from seemingly every orifice while going into convulsions that wrack her entire body.

Medical science has neither diagnosis nor cure. All Aubry has to go by, on, for, and with, is her meager experience that when she changes location she immediately starts to heal, but when she stays in the same place for too long, the blood starts dripping out of her nose and her condition takes over.

Fast, hard and with extreme pain in every limb.

So Aubry is off, and so is the story. At first, with her whole family, moving from hôtel to hôtel in the suburbs of Paris, but then, as she runs out of places she hasn’t been yet, out into the countryside with her mother, Aubry’s knowledge of her mother’s utter exhaustion and total depression, and her awareness of her family’s dwindling finances.

Aubry runs away and leaves her mother behind. She’s all alone, walking that wide, wide world, at the age of twelve.

This is her story. It’s not exactly an adventure, although there are certainly adventures within it. It’s absolutely a story about the journey and not the destination, because as far as Aubry can discover, the only destination is death.

But along the way, for as many steps and as much time as Aubry has, there’s an ever-changing, always moving, and utterly fascinating life.

Escape Rating A: If you could put Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in 80 Days, both by Jules Verne and both still fairly new when Aubry begins her walk, into a book blender, you’d get at least the basic broth of Aubry’s long journey. A broth spiced with a bit of Nnedi Okorafor’s Remote Control.

The difference is that both of those classic stories are ‘there and back again’ adventures. The protagonists set out with every expectation that they will return home at the end, more or less safe and sound.

Aubry can neither go home, nor can she make a new one. She’s a human turtle, carrying her home on her back. And it’s HARD. It’s a hardness that both does and does not define her, and that’s what makes her journey so compelling to follow.

On the one hand, she has to be as self-sufficient as possible, because she knows that she will often be utterly alone, not because she wants to be, but because she travels through many of the empty places of the world, frequently on paths that no one else can see. At the same time, she learns that when she does find companions, the only thing she has to trade is her ability to use her self-sufficiency to help others.

But what keeps the reader with her is the emotional journey. She goes from spoiled to über capable. She goes from being done for to doing for others when possible and whatever is necessary to survive all the time.

And she goes from child to young woman to middle-aged and to elderly – one step at a time and always with the monkey of her condition on her back. She makes friends and loses them and drinks from all the springs of the world – but only to the shallowness of a teaspoon.

She samples but never stays. And we’re right there with her.

This is a story that grabbed me from the first page with the sheer puzzle of it. The idea of her endless journey, and even more fascinating still, the progress of it in a world where all the corners had not yet been filled in.

And that it was a woman’s journey and not a man’s. There were (and are) plenty of such journeys undertaken by men in fiction. When Aubry sets out, it was the age of such stories, often written by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Their tales often told stories of ‘big’ adventures of one sort or another.

Instead, Aubry’s journey is long rather than ‘big’. She’s not trying to become famous – although she does. She’s trying to survive and that gives her story a much different flavor and leads it towards a more authentic conclusion. In the end, as much as we may envy her ability to pick up stakes and travel, to make herself comfortable wherever she goes, we feel for her inability to ever take a break from it.

So, if you’re ever feeling like home is a bit too comfortable to ever leave, take A Short Walk Through a Wide World with Aubry Tourvel and travel by armchair with gratitude for the ability to take that walk with her without having to leave everything behind, and see the world from the perspective of someone else’s aching feet.