Catfish Rolling

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I had many expectations for this title after reading the enchanting description about catfish that cause the land to rise and fall beneath the islands of Japan. Both Sora and her father have been obsessively exploring the zones in secret, each with motives of their own. Catfish Rolling takes many contradictory stories and ideas and seamlessly weaves them into a single tale. Her overseas adventure brings great wonder, but Luki soon discovers a darker side, of racism and inequality. Her fiction and nonfiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, the Irish Times, and the Kyoto Journal among others; this is her debut novel.

Sora feeling lost in the unknown future, and the bittersweet nature of changing friendships, felt incredibly relatable. Sora is not Japanese enough to be as her classmates, but not foreign enough to be treated in different conditions. There are a few examples of how different people experience these emotions and their reactions to them. Those readers, who enjoy the emotional ride and are more into the heart than the reason, are in for a treat.Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review! So, get ready for a deep dive into emotions, loss, and hope because this read dances around that heart the whole way through. Her dad slowly floats away from his mind, forgetting little things like what day it is or when something happen. Sora grew up with the legend of the giant catfish that lives under the islands of Japan; a creature of magic and myth responsible for earthquakes and tsunami’s by flicks of its tail. View image in fullscreen Simon James Green, author of the ‘timely’ Boy Like Me, photographed at home in south London.

Both subtle and horribly raw, Sora shines a light on grief and loss, and what it means to have (or not have) enough time. Inspired by the fate of Penelope’s maids in Homer’s The Odyssey, this is a lavish epic of power, vengeance, love and fate.The majority of the story takes place seven years later, as the world is adjusting to the change in time flow in certain areas. Metaphors create a song of magical realism that is interwoven into the experience of Catfish Rolling. All in all, I'd recommend this if you're looking for a YA novel that's complex and multifaceted in the ways that it deals with grief and trauma. A father and daughter are left puzzled and intrigued by the unusual and mysterious shaking, which causes the mother to disappear. Her bestfriend, the only friend she had, Koki, would be pursuing his studies in Tokyo and leaving her too.

This will be one of those elusive narratives that I won’t be able to review well because words can’t capture the magic of Catfish Rolling. Generational gaps, family dynamics and a young-adult protagonist navigating desolate and haunted landscapes, mindscapes and combinations of those two. especially when she begins to see shadows and her own father seems to be slipping as if caught in his own, odd time bubble. Sora struggles with her own identity throughout the novel – feeling somewhat adrift from her peers, half Canadian and half Japanese but not feeling that she truly fits into either space. However, this concept is short-lived and the book quickly becomes absorbed in the daily life of Sora - her future, her relationship with her father, the shock of her lost mother, and her struggles as a minority.Emotions and loss transcend time, and this young girl only sees both as being beyond anyone's control. Catfish Rolling is a savvy, fast-paced novel that will engage mature readers and easily devoured in a single sitting.