She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai and Naruto Nagakawa translated by Ginny Talley Takemori
Published by Doubleday 2022

I’ve read and enjoyed many stories by Japanese writers. What I loved about them was the quiet simplicity of the writing, the sensitivity of the descriptions of death and the gentle quirkiness of the plots. It helps that many of them feature cats or coffee (two of my favourite things).

This book is similar in many respects, illustrating the importance of communication and the unbreakable bond between humans and animals.

The story is partly based on Shinkai’s first animation work, which was a five-minute story about the relationship between a cat and his human, told from the cat’s perspective. The film drew on the author’s experience of solitary apartment living and other elements of his life at that time.

There is love, friendship, loss and death all slowly revealed and with no dramatics, simply making use of well chosen words which, in my case, unfortunately left me a little more drained than perhaps the author intended.