‘The Cat and the City’

BY NICK BRADLEY

When I started the Your

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Club, I knew we’d have a disproportionate number of Japanese books grace these pages.The first of these was the beautiful and lyrical novel,‘The Guest Cat’ by Takashi Hiraide.This month, we are returning to Japan, but from the perspective of an outsider — we’re reading Nick Bradley’s debut novel,‘The Cat and the City.’

It begins with a slightly creepy tattoo artist who is commissioned to tattoo a map of Tokyo on to a woman’s back.Without wanting to spoil a good story, his artistic license causes a magical ripple effect, and introduces us to the calico cat who we see on the book cover.This cat wanders the streets of Tokyo, tying together lives and short stories, and shows how our lives are so interconnected, even when it feels like they’re not.