*I received a digital ARC on NetGalley from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*
Title: Catfish Rolling
Author: Clara Kumagai
Publisher: Penguin Teen
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781774882764
Synopsis:
There’s a catfish under Japan, and when it rolls, the land rises and falls. At least, that’s what Sora was told after she lost her mother to an earthquake so powerful that it cracked time itself. Sora and her father are some of the few who still live near the most powerful of these “zones” — the places where time has been irrevocably sped up, or slowed down.
When high school ends, and her best friend leaves for university, Sora finds herself stuck and increasingly alone. She begins secretly conducting her own research, tracking down a time expert in Tokyo. She also feels increasingly conflicted in her quasi-romantic feelings for her best friend — and for the time expert’s assistant, a striking and confident girl named Maya, another hafu (half-Japanese, half-non) girl with whom Sora forms an instant bond.
But when Sora’s father disappears, she has no choice but to return home and venture deep into the abandoned time zones to find him, and perhaps the catfish itself . . .
———-
What a beautiful, beautiful book Catfish Rolling is. An incredible and stunning debut novel, this book is a surreal exploration of time, memory, and coming of age. The book begins as an earthquake, caused by a catfish trapped under Japan that rolls and heaves apart the land, and time itself breaks apart, fragmenting into areas where time may be faster or slower. The living beings that were in these zones when time broke disappeared without a trace. Sora’s father is officially researching the effects of fast and slow time to better understand how they work in relation to “normal time”. Sora herself is also unofficially, and quite secretly, spending her free time in the zones, though this violates the law, searching for any connection to her lost mother that she can find. Sora’s father begins to experience effects on his memory and his own journey into the zones leads Sora into a terrifying exploration of the unknown in hopes of saving him.
Sora is poised on the cusp of adulthood. A recent high school grad with no job or schooling lined up, she’s perfectly content to offer clandestine tours into the zones to anyone willing to pay. Her casual romantic interest leaves for Tokyo and Sora continues to exist in her isolated world, exploring her own understanding of herself and her losses as she works to come to terms with who she is and where she wants to go with her life. Through a new acquaintance that comes into her life, a researcher specializing in time science, she is then introduced to a young woman with whom she sparks an immediate connection. A friendship, but hopefully more, opening Sora up to a new world of possible paths to choose.
This book delicately and thoughtfully explores identity as Sora ruminates on her cultural identity as half-Canadian and half-Japanese, never quite belonging in a place that she identifies as home, but that views her as other. She is unmoored in who she is, where she’s meant to go, and what steps she should, or wants, to take. She’s also discovering her own sexual identity as one relationship fizzles and another begins. Kiko is a friend-turned-lover who perhaps is better off remaining a friend. But Maya is a more confident and self-assured version of Sora who sparks something deep within her: a desire to grow and learn, and to break out of the fear that’s kept her paralyzed and frozen in the past for so long. It is through Maya’s friendship and their budding romance that Sora is able to break through the barriers that have held her back in order find resolution and closure on the pains of the past. It is through Maya that she is able to envision a new and exciting new possible future.
This is an absolute must-read for this fall season. I could read this book over and over again. Go get yourself a copy because you won’t want to miss out.
Happy reading!
Worn Pages and Ink 