Title: If Cats Disappeared from the World
Author: Genki Kawamura
Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Fantasy
Number of Pages: 202
Rating: B-
Recommended?: Yes
If Cats Disappeared from the World is an offbeat Japanese novel about a mild-mannered guy in his 30’s (he’s never given a name, which I didn’t register until well into the book) who finds out he has a very short amount of time to live after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. After coming back from the doctor’s, the protagonist is visited by the devil, who looks just like his except for his tacky taste in clothes, including a preference for loud Hawaiian shirts.
The devil is quite forthright about being the Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies himself, and the main character is strangely undisturbed by this information. Maybe he’s beyond being able to process bad news at that point. All I know is I’m an atheist and I’d literally be shitting myself if I got a surprise visit from Satan.
The devil offers to cut a deal with the protagonist (which he’s also surprisingly casual about, as if it’s something that happens semi-regularly)- he’ll let him live one day per thing he agrees to let vanish from the world. The MC agrees, desperate to prolong his life. First cell phones go, followed by clocks and movies, but the MC finally draws the line at the devil deleting cats. I don’t think this is too big a spoiler, since the title of the final chapter tells you what will happen.
At the end, he finally manages to accept his fate, despite having had a short and fairly mundane life. His own pet cat reminds him how important animals are to the lives of humans and the selfishness of taking away cats for the sake of his own self-preservation. Like I said, it’s pretty easy to figure out what’s going to happen in this book. No big surprises.
I was a little bit confused whether cell phones, movies, and clocks came BACK after the MC’s death, and also why there was a movie theater after movies had stopped existing. I enjoyed the book’s premise and the low-key strangeness of it all (more the whimsy and imagination of magical realism than something more substantially weird) but found there were too many ‘happiness is a choice’-type platitudes.
I liked the portrayal of the devil and how he took the form of the MC (or the person he could have been) and didn’t seem all that evil or scary. Mostly he just came off as a douche. Of course the MC’s mom was a veritable saint who never raised her voice or yelled at him. Funny how people become so perfect after they’re dead. Even when she was dying of cancer, she didn’t have a single bad thing to say about anybody. While I enjoyed reading this book, I still like it lacked a strong emotional impact. A good read, but not something that will particularly stick with me.
Sarah's Corner 