If Cats Disappeared from the World
Genki Kawamura
Picador, £8.99
A young man diagnosed with cancer is warned he has very little time left, but the Devil throws him a lifeline, appearing before him as his own doppelganger and offering a deal. The Devil will extend the narrator’s lifespan by a day for each item he chooses to delete from the world. The first thing he allows to disappear in exchange for an extra day’s life is mobile phones, which doesn’t seem to work out too badly. But the stakes increase, building up to the dilemma referred to in the title. All the while, the prospect of his impending death is bringing back memories of his late mother and the cat they raised together, as well as his estrangement from his father. Kawamura has written a poignant, affecting story about facing up to one’s mortality, taking responsibility for one’s choices and deciding what truly holds value. It’s already sold a million copies in Japan, presumably leaving few dry eyes in its wake.
The Diary of a Bookseller
Shaun Bythell
Profile, £8.99
When Shaun Bythell checked out the Facebook pages of other bookshops, he decided they were “almost universally bland and didn’t really convey the full horror or the exquisite joy of working in a bookshop”. His own attempts to give readers a fuller and more accurate impression of the life of a bookseller, including withering assessments of his customers, has spilled from Facebook into print with this diary from 2014. The owner of Scotland’s biggest second-hand bookshop, located in Wigtown, pulls no punches, whether he’s venting his frustration with penny-pinching customers or his dependably unreliable assistant, Nicky. We also see just how much of his job involves driving around in all weathers to buy up collections, which often leads to reflective moments while clearing out dead people’s houses. As amusing as Bythell’s snarkiness often is, there’s a serious point to this book, which makes no bones about the desperate conditions for bookshops in this country and their dependence on Amazon for survival.
Patient H69
Vanessa Potter
Bloomsbury Sigma, £9.99
Over the course of three days, a mysterious neurological illness robbed 40-year-old TV producer Vanessa Potter of her sight and sense of touch. Her book begins with an account of that terrifying 72 hours as she descended into darkness and numbness with no idea of what was causing it. Her description of the gradual return of her sight is fascinating, as she navigates a “moonlight monochromatic planet”, attracted to patterns of lines, reacting to stimuli she can’t consciously see and drawing on her memories of colour to try to force her perception of it to return. The journey she makes is not just one of recovery but the opening-up of a new phase of her life. The second half of the book relates how she consulted specialists to learn more about the disease and adopted a new role as a scientific communicator. It’s a frightening but triumphant memoir of Potter’s determination and the transformative effect the experience has had on her life.
ALASTAIR MABBOTT
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