This is an utterly beautiful little story, a perfectly worked gem. A mostly black cat is gifted to a young couple with the promise it will bring luck, and things seem to go well - not miraculously well, but a steady streak of progress in their respective professions. Nine years later, to the day, another cat is delivered as a companion for the first. The first cat, Berkeley, doesn't seem to take to Clover and this disruption begins to reverse the good fortune of the previous years.
Charlie Jane Anders give this a fairy tale cadence throughout, which works perfectly. The unexpected gift of cats from strange men is odd, but within the tone this is not too strange to be accepted. Perhaps it is the cats, but there are hints of Murakami and, perhaps, Charles de Lint.
The tale itself is simple, that of a couple facing the ups and downs of life together, the one from whom we get the POV questioning himself when things go awry and paralysed with fear, unable to communicate. What makes it sparkle is that handling of tone and detail; the characters are minimally but artfully sketched with small details, and is the world. This is clearly a fantasy tale - as I say, a fairy story, with strange people delivering cats that (may) grant luck and may not be cats at all - but the brushed mise en scene suggests a world that is barely tomorrow - increased displacement of refugees, violence and intolerance. Actually, as it was published in 2016, perhaps we are in that tomorrow.
The whole is filled with compassion and flair and magic. We are left with lose threads but this is fine as they are part of the richness of the tapestry, and an acceptance that not having magical, external luck is simply normal life. If that maneki neko actually was any more than a placebo after all.
I see that the story is marked as All the Birds in the Sky 1.5. I've had that on my shelf for awhile, so I think it is due a read.
Original review at goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2673995901
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