Not only do we experience Sora's grief for her mother, her family, and her life that was, but shared loss and a community's grief. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones - the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora has dual-heritage (her mother was Japanese, her father is Canadian,) because of this, other Japanese people consider her a foreigner, and she is often asked if she can speak Japanese. When Sora’s father goes missing, she has no option but to venture into these spaces in hope of tracking him down.

Identity, family and loss are key themes running throughout the novel where myth, fantasy and scientific discovery collide. Stylish, accomplished and thought-provoking story-telling explores themes of identity, philosophy, science, ecology, life, loss and love. Another element of this book I loved a lot, is that even if it’s often not easy for Sora to have 2 nationalities, it is so enriching too. I love any premise that discusses time - time-travelling, time shift, the reason I am a big fan of Christopher Nolan. I'd recommend it for any fans of Japanese fiction or anyone who wants a coming of age story with a difference.The relationship with Sora's dad was sweet and realistic, and the way the author handled grief and intersected it with time was amazing.

Since then, the hardest-hit areas have fractured into zones, each flowing at a different pace of time. trochę wonky napisane i jeszcze ostatnie 2 godziny audiobooka mega mnie nudziły i często się wyłączałam słuchając. Green’s experience of being banned from visiting a church school in the UK because he is gay and the current debate about sex education in the classroom make this all the more timely and important. The Japanese culture is gently interwoven between scientific explanations and coming-of-age romance to make an enchanting.I want to thank RB Media via NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to listen to Catfish Rolling by Clara Kumagi and narrated by Susan Momoko-Hingley. And the mysteries hiding in each journey varied so much that it’s not surprising most people were afraid of the zones.

The story isn’t about some epic plot to fix the time flow or save the world, but it doesn’t need to be. It was when Sora and Maya started looking for Sora's dad that I got so invested, and i honestly believe the author should have started earlier with this arc. She was just so negative and angry the entire time, and it became impossible for me to connect to her on any level (not even on the being-half-asian-half-white level). View image in fullscreen Simon James Green, author of the ‘timely’ Boy Like Me, photographed at home in south London.The blurb for the book mentioned that this would be a perfect book for fans of Studio Ghibli and I couldn’t agree more. Generational gaps, family dynamics and a young-adult protagonist navigating desolate and haunted landscapes, mindscapes and combinations of those two. The different time zones are described as dangerous, but the actual consequences of them were not explored enough for my taste. I love how the last portion leaves what happened up to interpretation - was it a metaphor, an imagining that helped mend her grief, or did she really lift the rock?