I’ll Prescribe You A Cat by You Ishida translated by E. Madison Shimoda (book review)

East of Takoyakushi Street, south of Tominokoji Street, west of Rokkaku Street, north of Fuyacho Street, Nakagyō Ward, Kyoto. These vague directions might lead you in a circle or they might lead you along a dingy alleyway to the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. The door might seem locked or stiff but, if you need it and want it badly enough inside, you find a doctor. A strange doctor that you heard about from a friend of a client’s sister’s neighbour. A doctor that has helped other people find happiness and cure. A doctor that prescribes you a… cat?

These five linked stories all revolve around new patients of the Clinic for the Soul and their prescribed cat. What would you do if you went to a therapist and they listened to your story, nodded and then handed you a cat? That’s what a bullied finance analyst, a harassed single mother, a stressed handbag designed and a trainee geisha all get from the clinic. Each protagonist deals with an unexpected cat in their lives in their own ways and each find the buried troubles of their lives bubbling to the surface to be dealt with, all because of their prescribed cat.

As a cat lover who read this book with a snoring elderly tortoiseshell on my lap I loved the first story, didn’t mind the second but, by the end, it felt a little ‘been there, done that’. The small hints of the doctor’s backstory were somewhat tenuous. Good for idly thinking about after the book was done, but not enough to keep me entranced by variations of lives changed by a cat. However, I did read this in one session so that feeling would be less for those who take in their fiction in sips rather than gulps. The novel does tread over familiar ground. The movie ‘The Unicorn Store’ with Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson was the story that came most into my mind as I was reading, but there are many examples of sudden and unexpected pet/person changing someone’s life in fiction.

The translation of this book was extremely well done. I tend to hesitate about reading books in translation as they often feel somewhat ‘foreign’ to me, with the word choice feeling slightly unnatural to my eye. Shimoda has kept the feel of being in Japan without making the English stilted or obviously translated. I don’t know anyone who will be reading this book in the original Japanese, but I am curious how things translate across if anyone cares to comment!

This book is lovely, especially, I suspect, when not binged. A warm reminder that no matter what we think is happening in our life, things can change through the love of a pet and caring for something outside of ourselves. More literary than the cozy fantasy of Travis Baldtree’s ‘Legends And Lattes’ or Julie Leong’s ‘The Teller Of Small Fortunes’, but don’t let that stop you. If you liked the magical realism in Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Ocean At The End Of The Lane’ definitely try ‘I Will Prescribe You A Cat.’ This will, I think, be going on the Christmas shopping list for a friend or two.

LK Richardson

October 2024

(pub: Berkely, 2024. 304 page hardback. Price: $25.00 (US). ISBN: 978-0-59381-874-9)

check out website: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/763041/well-prescribe-you-a-cat-by-syou-ishida-translated-by-e-madison-shimoda/