I’ve been thinking about death quite a bit this year. It’s been honestly a chore. Throes of fear and despair as I wrestle with the fact that no matter what – I will die. Well besides crying about it, I’ve also taken to trying to process it I guess. Writing about it, meditating about it, talking about it, and – germane to this review – reading about it.

Our narrator has a wicked headaches and just can’t seem to feel well. Upon a trip to the doctor, he learns that he has brain cancer and weeks if not days to live. At the ripe age of 30, this is an awful shock. He has so much life to live, yet he’s done nothing with his life.

He lives a simple life. He works as a postman. He fell out with his father around the time his mother passed. Estranged from the life he lived up to this point, his only real companion is his cat, Cabbage – his late mother’s cat that he lives with.

Reeling about how to spend his last couple of days in this life, he gets approached by none other than the devil himself. Satan comes with an appealing offer: the devil will extend our narrators life by one day in exchange for making an item completely disappear. For example, one day of life will cost you every telephone on the planet being completely disappearing. Who likes phones anymore anyway – fair trade. It’s even freeing to hear people talking on the train or reading a book instead of scrolling. This is until our hero doesn’t know why his date is running late or standing him up or in danger.

This deal is ever green: so long as you want to make stuff disappear, you can keep on living. But what is life worth as you start peeling back the things we layer on top of it? What is one life worth. Obviously to the owner of that life – quite a lot. Is it worth living if every cat in the world poofs out of existence.

Lest we forget this is a reviews, it’s worth noting that the writing can be a bit hokey; it’s also worth noting that this book is translated from Japanese so blame the translation.

This book deals with many facets of the human experience in ways that are both obvious and more subtle.

Obviously, death is primary theme in this book. The brain tumor serves as a sword of Damocles, forcing the narrator to come face to face with his life, how he has lived it, and what he wants it to be. If death is the end of all you’ve ever been what does it mean to have been? Almost accidentally, the main character finds himself falling toward the people he’s estranged from. Seeking an old friend or old lover for some ostensibly simple task that veneers a craving for meaning and connection.

Conversely, life and its meaning is held up as the light by which you see deaths shadow. The transactional nature of the narrator bartering his days gives each new one a much more palpable value. Instead of being swallowed by the despair of dying, he often uses the very fact that he has so little time left as the rational for having a positive outlook.

In line with the previous two themes, the author digs into not only what is life but what is a good life? In the darkest corners of this book, we find Cabbage, the aforementioned cat companion, comforting our narrator in the sweet, gracious, self-serving way that only cats can. The soft nuzzles and pets of soft sweet fur are the sweet homie feelings that really make life worth living. That simple goodness is echoed throughout the whole book. This is epitomized by the author’s Camus like revelation that – since death is the great end and will end a good life the same as a bad life, it’s best to live good and live full.

This book also digs into themes of connection, grief, contemporary growing pains, the human condition, and the tower parts of ourselves that we hide away within.

Overall, it was a 4/5 read hidden behind 3/5 writing. If you are a 20-something spiraling in the despair of your own mortality I recommend you get a cat and read this book.