Catfish Rolling
by Clara Kumagai
High School    Amulet/Abrams    432 pp.
10/23    9781419768514    $19.99
e-book ed.  9798887070476    $15.54

When Sora, a Japanese-Caucasian (hafu) teenager, was eleven, a Fukushima-esque earthquake—known in Japanese folklore as a catfish rolling beneath the islands—fractured the land into zones where time slips faster or slower than it normally would. That day, Sora lost her mother and ojiichan (grandfather). Now, she sees her father lose his memory as he enters these time-twisted areas to conduct research. Sora feels aimless and alone. She recently graduated from high school and her close male friend and love interest is away at university. While conducting illegal tours of the zones, she meets researchers like her father (one of whom, Maya, might also become a love interest), who help Sora discover her ability to accurately assess the passage of time just by observing her world. If only understanding the people around her were as easy. With her past a traumatic blur, her present a constant source of stress with her father now missing, and her future disappointingly uncertain, Sora must conduct her own research and discover how she wants her time to unfurl. Told in clear yet pensive prose, Sora’s story unfolds in pieces that flit forward and back in a disorienting and ambitious yet compelling narrative. Occasional visual motifs, appearing as chapter openers, feature seasonal elements—waves, cherry blossoms, stones, leaves—to complement the story’s unstoppable passage of time.

From the January/February 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.