Short Story Wednesday: The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

 

The Goodbye Cat is a Japanese book, written by Hiro Arikawa, and translated by Philip Gabriel. It  consists of seven short stories, and each story is set in Japan. All of the stories are about cats. Most of them focus on one cat and the family that it lives with. Another common theme is rescued cats, cats that are brought home after being abandoned. At least two of the stories are about kittens that are too young to survive unless a human intervenes and provides warmth and the necessary nutrition. I learned a lot about that process from this book. Some of the stories are told at least partially from the cat's point of view. 

One of my favorite stories is "The Goodbye Cat." The family in that story have two cats; Diana is the oldest cat, Kota is the youngest. Kota was adopted about the same time the second son in the family is born. The parents discuss and decide on the names for the new cat and the new baby at the same time. (There is much emphasis on names and how they are chosen in these stories.) The story follows the family from the time Kota joins the family until his death of old age, when the youngest son has graduated from college. 

The second story is also very good. In "Bringing Up Baby," a married couple who have recently had a baby also acquire a cat about the same time. The father, Keisuke, is a manga artist, and most of his effort goes into his artistic work. He has always been somewhat flaky and incompetent in other areas of life. When his wife goes to stay with her parents to have the baby, Keisuke finds a tiny kitten and rescues it, and with the help of the vet and online research, learns to help it survive. So when his wife gets home with the baby, she finds a new helpless kitten in the house. But along the way she discovers that his efforts to care for the kitten have given him skills to become a competent parent too. Sounds mawkish, but really it isn't. 

"Cat Island" is about a man, his second wife, and his young son adjusting to their new life as a family together. The family takes a trip to Taketomi Island in Okinawa, referred to as Cat Island. The father is a freelance photographer who is taking photos of the cats on the island for an assignment. That story had some supernatural aspects. After reading that story I found that there are several islands in Japan called Cat Island, with unusually large populations of cats.

The last two stories in the book are about characters in a previous book by Hiro Arikawa, The Travelling Cat Chronicles, which I read in January. In that book, a cat is adopted by a man, Satoru, after he takes the cat in when it is hit by a car. He names the cat Nana, and they live together for five years. At that point, Satoru has to find a home for Nana. They travel to various parts of Japan to visit with several of Satoru's old friends to see if they can take the cat in. "Finding Hachi" is sort of a prequel to The Travelling Cat Chronicles, telling more about Satoru's first cat, Hachi, that he had for several years as a child. "Life Is Not Always Kind" tells about one more person in Satoru's earlier life that he and Nana visit on the trip. 

I liked this book a lot. I did not like all the stories equally, and there was one I did not care for, but it was very short. Most of the stories were between 40 to 50 pages in length. I am a cat lover; I don't think that is required to enjoy the book, but it certainly helps.

Silent Parade: Keigo Higashino

 

This is my third book read for the Japanese Literature Challenge 18, hosted at Dolce Bellezza. Silent Parade is about two crimes, separated by about 20 years, which have connections. In both cases, young girls have been killed. The suspect is the same for both. This summary is from the Macmillan site:

A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned out house. There’s a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn’t indicted, he returns to mock the girl’s family. And this isn’t the first time he’s been suspected of the murder of a young girl, nearly twenty years ago he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Police worked both cases.

The neighborhood in which the murdered girl lived is famous for an annual street festival, featuring a parade with entries from around Tokyo and Japan. During the parade, the suspected killer dies unexpectedly. His death is suspiciously convenient but the people with all the best motives have rock solid alibis. DCI Kusanagi turns once again to his college friend, Physics professor and occasional police consultant Manabu Yukawa, known as Detective Galileo, to help solve the string of impossible-to-prove murders.

My Thoughts:

• My copy of the book was only 344 pages long but it seemed longer. I think that is because the plot is so complex; the story has several twists and turns, but the plot dragged at times. It was worth it in the end; the final solution was satisfying. 
• The book is full of very interesting characters, and many of them get fleshed out throughout the book. I felt like we got to know several of the police detectives, plus Manabu Yukawa (also playfully referred to as Detective Galileo, which he dislikes), better than in any of the previous books in the series. Plus many of the secondary characters related to the crimes (family members of the victim, friends of the family, etc.) are well defined also.
• I don't see these books as traditional mysteries like those written by Agatha Christie, but the author sprinkles references to Christie's books throughout the story. Also another vintage mystery author, John Dickson Carr.
• For once I saw how Manabu Yukawa puts his physics background to work. That also may have happened in the previous book in the series, A Midsummer's Equation, which is my favorite in the series so far. He did a few experiments in that book too.
• This book gives the reader a good look at the police procedures and legal limitations in Japan, versus in the US. 

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2021 (orig. pub. 2018)
Translator:  Giles Murray 
Length:       344 pages
Format:       Hardcover
Series:        Detective Galileo
Setting:       Tokyo, Japan
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:       Borrowed from my husband.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Listerdale Mystery" by Agatha Christie

 

I have discovered the Agatha Christie Short Stories Read Along hosted by Fanda at Fanda Classiclit. It originally started in 2024, but I just saw it recently, and I plan to join in this year when I can. 

Fanda has a post each month to note the stories for that month. The post for February is here. The full list of stories for the year is here. The stories for February are "The Listerdale Mystery" and "The Tuesday Night Club," a Miss Marple story.

So, for Short Story Wednesday today, I read the "The Listerdale Mystery." Here are my thoughts:

A widow, Mrs. St. Vincent, lives with her grown daughter and son in a boarding house. She checks her finances every month, and now she realizes that they may have to move to someplace even cheaper. Originally they lived in much better circumstances, in a home that had been in the family for generations, but her husband didn't handle business affairs very well and left them with little to live on. One day she notices an advertisement in the paper for a rental house that requires only nominal rent. She goes to check out the house, and the butler shows her around, but it seems too good to be true, so she leaves without any hope. Soon she gets a letter offering her the house for a small amount of rent. 

She moves into the house and everything goes well. But Mrs. St. Vincent's son, Rupert, is suspicious. It turns out that the house they are living in is owned by Lord Listerdale, who disappeared from the house and then later turned up in East Africa. Rupert thinks that there may have been foul play, and comes up with all kinds of theories. He even begins to do some sleuthing.

This story was different from other mystery short stories by Christie that I have read. It is a mystery but it does not involve a crime, and is actually closer to a romance. I enjoyed the story; it was a fun read and had a nice ending.

“The Listerdale Mystery” was first published as “The Benevolent Butler” in Grand Magazine, December 1925. I read this story in The Golden Ball And Other Stories, a collection of 15 short stories by Agatha Christie.

Classics Club Spin #40, February 2025

 

The latest Classics Club Spin has been announced. To join in, I choose twenty books from my classics list that are still unread. On Sunday, February 16th, the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The goal is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by April 11th, 2025.

So, here is my list of 20 books for the spin...

1. Edna Ferber – Show Boat (1926)
2. Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr.Ripley (1955)
3. Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
4. William Shakespeare – Much Ado About Nothing (1598)
5. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818) 
6. John Steinbeck – Cannery Row (1945)
7. Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
8. William Thackeray – Vanity Fair (1848)
9. Virginia Woolf – Flush (1933)
10. Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958)   
11. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
12. Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre (1847) 
13. Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
14. Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana (1958)
15. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953)  
16. Dashiell Hammett – Red Harvest (1929)
17. Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
18. Dorothy L. Sayers – The Nine Tailors (1934)
19. Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
20. James Thurber – The 13 Clocks (1950)

The first 15 books on this list were on my last Spin list. But I have swapped out some books on the last list for others from my Classics list, so the last 5 books are new ones.

The two books I would most like to be selected from my list are A Wrinkle in Time by L'Engle or Cannery Row by Steinbeck. Although I am sure that The Talented Mr. Ripley by Highsmith will be too tense for me, I would like to finally read that one. However, any books on my list would be fine.  

Short Story Wednesday: Fishy Business, ed. by Linda Rodriguez

The short stories I read this week are from Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology, edited by Linda Rodriguez. 

A short description from the back of the book:

Killer hooks and fishy characters will lure you into this fifth anthology from the Guppies Chapter of Sisters in Crime. This volume nets you twenty-two crafty capers featuring slippery eels, wily sharks, and hard-boiled crabs. From ultra-modern computer crimes to old-fashioned confidence tricks, these tales are sure to satisfy your appetite for great short mystery fiction.

These are the stories I read...

"The Wannabe" by Lida Bushloper

A young woman determined to be an actress attends an audition which turns out to be a scam. Then she meets an agent who tries to take advantage of her disappointment and her lack of experience. 

"Nova, Capers, and a Schmear of Cream Cheese" by Debra H. Goldstein

This one was a lot of fun and the ending was a complete surprise to me. The former manager of a delicatessen is concerned that the quality of food being sold in the delicatessen is going downhill under its new management, and that it will reflect badly on him.

"Windfall" by Rita A. Popp

In this story, two young women who spent some years at Miss Harmon's foster home as children return to her home after her death to pick up bequests that she left them in her will. Jillian's bequest was a string of pearls, which were not in the house; Trina was given all of Miss Harmon's books. Jillian forces Trina to return later in the evening and break into the house to try to find the pearls. 

"Who Stole My Lunch?" by Kate Fellowes

The familiar story of the office worker whose lunch is stolen from the shared refrigerator in the staff lunch room. I did guess how the story would end and it was still fun.

"My Night with the Duke of Edinburgh" by Susan Daly

I liked this story especially because it is historical fiction, set in 1951 in Ontario, Canada, when Princess Elizabeth and her husband Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, toured Canada. This was a complex little caper, with a nice ending. Susan Daly is an author of short crime fiction who lives in Toronto.

Of the five stories I read, my favorites were "The Wannabe" by Lida Bushloper and "My Night with the Duke of Edinburgh" by Susan Daly. All of the stories were entertaining, and most were humorous.

Books Read in January 2025

 

With the exception of one book, I was very happy with the books I read in January. I read two books for the Japanese Literary Challenge. I read several new-to-me authors and continued some series I had started earlier. 

Fiction

The Travelling Cat Chronicles (2012) by Hiro Arikawa
Translated by Philip Gabriel

This was the first book I read for the Japanese Literary Challenge. It is the story of a man and his cat, which he adopted after the cat was hit by a car. After they have lived together for five years, the man has to find a new home for the cat. They travel to various parts of Japan to visit with several of the man's old friends to see it they can take the cat in. See my review.

Anything Is Possible (2017) by Elizabeth Strout

This book, the second book in the Amgash series, consists of linked short stories. Some of the stories give more information about Lucy Barton and members of her family who still live in Amgash. Other stories are about other residents of Amgash, who are in some way connected to Lucy Barton. I liked it and am ready to start something else by Strout. See my review. 

Crime Fiction

Parting Breath (1978) by Catherine Aird 

Parting Breath is an academic mystery set in Catherine Aird's fictional county of Calleshire, England; it features Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Berebury CID, and his assistant, Detective Constable Crosby. The first book of the series was published in 1966 and the 28th book in 2023. Catherine Aird is one of my favorite mystery writers, and I hope to read all the books in the series. See my review.

The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) by Ruth Ware

I had not read any of Ware's books, I was curious, and I thought I would like a book about a woman on a cruise.  For most of the book I was not too impressed. There were no characters I cared about, and especially not the main character. But the end was very well done and kept me turning the pages, so I revised my overall opinion a bit.   

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (2023) by Alison Goodman

My husband and I were both interested in this book when it first came out; the setting in the Regency period was appealing. The story is a good blend of historical fiction, mystery, romance, and adventure, with the emphasis on adventure. Some of the scenes of life in Regency England, depicting the way the poor were treated and the mistreatment of women in general, are excruciating to read. Overall, I enjoyed the book and expect that I will read the sequel.

Thirteen Guests (1936) by J. Jefferson Farjeon

In mid-January, Neeru at A Hot Cup of Pleasure reviewed five books by J. Jefferson Farjeon. Her post motivated me to read one of Farjeon's books. I found that my husband had a copy of Thirteen Guests in his TBR stacks, so I started reading it. It is a country house mystery and I enjoyed it much more than I expected. I liked the characters and how the author developed them, and there was some romance that did not take over the story. And I especially liked the unusual ending.

Three Assassins (2004) by Kōtarō Isaka
Translated by Sam Malissa

This was the second book I read for the Japanese Literature Challenge. The author also wrote Bullet Train, and the two books are similar in many ways. The main character is Suzuki, who was formerly a schoolteacher but is working for a crime gang. Suzuki is seeking revenge for the murder of his wife by working undercover in the gang. See my review.

Currently reading

I am about a third of the way into Fall from Grace by L.R. Wright, published in 1991. It is the fourth book in a series starring Karl Alberg, a staff sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Sechelt, British Columbia, Canada. I am enjoying it very much.

In early February, my husband and I had jury duty. Although the trial we were called for was not being tried at the main courthouse, we did visit the beautiful Santa Barbara County Courthouse while we were there. My husband took some photos, and I am sharing two of them in this post. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.