We'll Prescribe You Another Cat

We'll Prescribe You Another Cat / Syou Ishida
trans. from the Japanese by E. Madison Shimoda
NY: Berkley, 2025, c2023.
304 p.

Starting off my New Reading Year with a review for the Japanese Literature Challenge! I have read a few titles by Japanese authors in the past while and will be sharing them over the next few weeks. 

This book is the second volume in a series I started last August during Women in Translation Month.  It carries forward the unique premise that people in Kyoto who find themselves in some kind of life transition or trouble can run across a clinic that can't be found otherwise. This clinic has a distinctive nurse and doctor, who prescribe clients a cat to take home, specifically chosen to help solve their problems. 

It's an amusing series, and in the second volume, plainly called We'll Prescribe You Another Cat, we meet a new set of characters who find the clinic just in time to help their lives progress. 

Each chapter features a new client, but the characters cross over between the stories, becoming side characters in someone else's chapter. Even the cats reappear. This gives a novel feeling to the book rather than just being a series of short stories, and it creates a community of sorts for the reader to follow. This adds depth and complexity to the book, just as in the first one in the series. It's a bit odd and the reader has figured out the doctor and nurse by the end of the first volume, even if the characters haven't. But it's a charming read, with some humour and some warm-hearted observations of family dynamics and personal growth. I really enjoyed it.