Book Review: Four Seasons in Japan

So, this is a BookClub book. I love BookClub - essentially, it's an excuse to meet up, chat about a book for 5 mins, and then chat shit for the next 2 hours. It's excellent. To be honest, this usually happens when BookTok recommends the books we read. But I think the next BookClub we have, we’ll have something more intelligent to talk about as there is a lot to unpack in this book. Now, we were told that this book can help you heal, and as myself and my fellow BookClub girlie have been through the mill, so to speak, we thought “Yes, we want a Healing book”. Yeah… no, we balled our eyes out at the end.

However, just because we were crying rivers that would drown the Sahara desert, it doesn't mean that the book was awful, bad, terrible, and unreadable. On the contrary, we thought this book was beautiful. The writer is British, but having lived several years in Japan -we felt that he had captured the essence of Japanese form and structure in his writing. Effectively, there is a book within a book. One is from the viewpoint of Flo, a translator who enjoys translating books from Japanese to English and within this is the book that Flo is trying to translate into English.

One of my favourite structural parts of the books is we’re led on this diaphanous journey where the characters cross liminal boundaries between books and storylines. One story seamlessly influences the other, and what's beautiful is that it is assumed the characters do not realise it - but Flo, our translator, does. The thread that binds them is cats. And as a self-glorified cat lady, that makes me happy. Cats are domesticated animals and have been featured in Japanese literature for centuries. The use of cats is to fulfil the emotional needs of the central characters. Flo has a cat called Lily, who is her companion through struggle, loneliness, and listlessness. For the character Ayako in the story Flo is translating, her companion is the fabulous stray tuxedo cat, Coltrane. Both cats are with each character when they are struggling the most - but sadly vanish when they have the strength to move forward with their lives.

Finding out who you are takes a long time, it does not happen overnight - so if you’re worried that your life has stalled or isn't going anywhere or you’re lonely. Stop for a moment, look around, reignite old passions you never know what will get you out of a slump. Growing into who you are is a process, but having a little furry friend around the place will absolutely help.