I Am a Cat

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There is nothing else like this book - and don't trust the narrator! - Rated
There is nothing else like this book. The only other book I can say this for is Life of Pi. This novel is huge, but it's so enjoyable to read that you will just breeze through it. Whilst reading it you start to feel like you belong to the family, and the neighborhood, in which it is set. The episodic plot is not much more than a loosely strung together collection of occurrences. Like many Japanese books, mood is all important, and things happen primarily to create or modify mood rather than to further the action. The narrator, who is a cat, is a very tricky character indeed, and I suspect whole essays could be written on him. Don't trust him.

The best a cat can get - Rated
When Natsume Soseki, student of both the east and west, first wrote "I am a Cat", it was intended as a short series of satirical articles. When its run was completed, such was the clamour for more that Soseki was moved to write further chapters. And it is obvious from reading them that as the collection advances, the cat, our nameless and defiant narrator, loses more feline qualities and acquires pronounced human sensibilities, as a result. However, to say that this in any way decreases the inherent humour, intelligence and acerbic observations made would be a falsehood. This is an immensely entertaining work, astute and acute, and deserves far more widespread acclaim than it at present commands. Any student of Japanese history or literature should add this high up their reading list.

A smug kitten takes on Japanese society - Rated
In Soseki Natsume's "I Am a Cat", a nameless feline narrator satirises Japanese society in the time of the Meiji Emperor, the era when the country re-opened contact with the outside world. Much of the subject matter concerns the period's uneasy mix between new Western ideas and traditional Japanese sensibilities.

The novel lacks any particularly strong plot as such, reading more like a set of short stories; indeed it first appeared as a series of installments in a literary magazine. However, "I Am a Cat" is frequently very funny and the modernity of the writing is striking given the book appeared in the early years of the 20th century. It was an interesting and amusing read, although I feel it might have been more rewarding if I'd had a better knowledge of society it describes.