{"id":43377,"date":"2025-07-26T16:20:42","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T20:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=43377"},"modified":"2025-07-26T16:20:42","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T20:20:42","slug":"review-of-catfish-rolling-by-clara-kumagai-read-by-susan-momoko-hingley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=43377","title":{"rendered":"Review of Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai, read by Susan Momoko-Hingley"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Catfish Rolling<\/em><\/p>\n

by Clara Kumagai
\nread by Susan Momoko-Hingley<\/p>\n

Clipper Audiobooks, 2023. 9 hours, 17 minutes.
\nReview written October 19, 2023, from a library eaudiobook<\/p>\n

Catfish Rolling<\/em> is an intriguing speculative fiction debut novel set in Japan after a series of earthquakes that also were timequakes.<\/p>\n

Sora and her parents were visiting family in Japan from Vancouver when the first timequake hit years ago. They lost her mother in one of the zones where time was faster or slower and stayed in Japan to try to find her. Sora\u2019s father is a scientist and made his career out of studying the time anomalies, but now he often seems confused, and traveling into the time-disrupted zones can\u2019t be good for him.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t stop Sora from traveling there herself to keep looking for her mother. Can people survive there? Sometimes she sees shadows. After graduating from high school, she sticks around their village to watch over her father but also to keep searching herself. She\u2019s better than anyone at feeling the difference in the rate of time flow in the zones, and starts a black market business of taking people into the zones.<\/p>\n

Now, I got hung up on some of the details occasionally. Seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth\u2019s axis. So how could there be a zone on the same planet where in one place it\u2019s Spring while nearby it\u2019s Winter? They\u2019re all on the same planet.<\/p>\n

But Clara Kumagai\u2019s skill was such that most of the time I could suspend my disbelief as Sora and her father took a scientific approach to the zones, trying to learn how they worked. They approached it as a serious scientific phenomenon, so as a reader it was easy to go along with that.<\/p>\n

This book was engaging and fascinating, looked at as a dangerous scientific phenomenon that was hard to understand. So it\u2019s a speculative fiction book about dealing with the unknown, but all bound up in grief and risk. I am looking forward to seeing more from this author.<\/p>\n

clarakumagai.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/catfish_rolling.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catfish Rolling by Clara Kumagai read by Susan Momoko-Hingley Clipper Audiobooks, 2023. 9 hours, 17 minutes. Review written October 19, 2023, from a library eaudiobook Catfish Rolling is an intriguing speculative fiction debut novel set in Japan after a series of earthquakes that also were timequakes. Sora and her parents were visiting family in Japan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,18,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiobooks","category-science-fiction","category-starred-review","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45562,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43377\/revisions\/45562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}