Book Review of The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

 

Book Review of The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

Translated by Louise Heal Kawai

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A teenage adventure and the power of truth.

If this novel was intended only for teenagers, then they probably don’t know when they are being spoiled.

A thrice-bereaved High School boy, Rintaro, comes to terms with the death of his grandfather who has looked after him since the death of his parents, by going on alarming adventures with a strange talking cat. The cat is, by Japanese standards, really quite rude and blunt, but that’s just what Rintaro needs. Each adventure is a fable giving a different perspective on the meaning and nature of books. The adventures take place in “labyrinths”, created either by the personality or the will of the character whom Rintaro is going to confront, but all are sustained by the power of truth. The way, the only way, for Rintaro to resolve issues is to find a way in which the character in that labyrinth is lying (perhaps to themselves) or under a misapprehension. If he can get his “adversary” to recognise and correct the lie, then the process immediately becomes non adversarial: things resolve themselves and books are freed. The last labyrinth, though, is created by someone far older and far more powerful than the others. And there is much more at stake than Rintaro’s own existence or happiness. He has to show how books give hope even if their power is waning in the modern world. And he needs all the insight and understanding he has gained from his adventures to answer that one.

Truth is the key, not just for the successful execution of Rintaro’s missions but also for his love-life, because Sayo, whom he doesn’t even see as his friend to begin with, sees through everything and is completely unimpressed by the High School’s star pupil and sportsman, whom even Rintaro loves a bit.

This novel was translated by Louise Heal Kawai.

The Cat Who Saved Books is published in the UK by Picador on the 16^th of September 2021.

Book Review of Thorneycroft to SA80 by Jonathan S. Ferguson

 Book Review of Thorneycroft to SA80 (British Bullpup Firearms 1901-2020) by Jonathan S. Ferguson.

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The Author is Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries. 

The original photography for this book was by N.R. Jenzen-Jones.

It is published by Headstamp Publishing (Nashville) 2020 and copies are available for commercial sale internationally. This review is based on a Backer’s Kit Edition, which does not differ in editorial content from the commercial edition.

This book sets out to be an authoritative history of bullpup firearms in Britain, and starts by defining what “bullpup” means (effectively a firearm where the barrel begins behind the trigger) and exploring the American origins of the term, which seems to have been coined two decades after the first British rifles meeting the definition. The production values of the book, normally a superficial matter, are excellent and this makes a genuine difference in a history of this kind, because the original photographs are crisp and clear and show exactly the things the text is seeking to convey, whilst archive drawings and diagrams are reproduced well-enough to be clearly readable and understandable. The author and his photographer enjoyed access to relevant firearms in the Royal Armouries collection and to various archive material and seem to have been mindful that not everyone would have such access. They have made the most of it so their readers can benefit.

The author shows some museum-curator’s bias in letting the guns speak for themselves rather than by paying too much attention to the oral tradition about them, but where opinions of actual people come from material with a provenance, they are included. The story is told largely in chronological order, and as far as British bullpup firearms are concerned that story starts with late Victorian inventors seeking to create a .303” service rifle to take the place of a cavalry carbine, which would also be capable of delivering accurate fire at longer ranges. With the propellant technology of the time, this demanded a longer barrel in a weapon which was not much longer than a carbine. This is where the 20^th century concept of the military bullpup rifle came from, even if the weapons concerned never saw service. The bullpup was the only way to have a rifle-length barrel in a carbine-length weapon. The definition of rifle-length barrels lost about eight inches around that time, (the “propellant technology of the time” having already changed without the bullpup inventors apparently noticing) and so the Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle was sufficient to meet the needs of both infantry and cavalry for two world wars.

Towards the end of the second world war the British Army knew it needed at least a self-loading rifle, but there was no enthusiasm for adopting (as some wanted) the American M1 Garand rifle, not least because it already looked old-fashioned compared to some captured German weapons, such as the FG42, the design of which suggested a bullpup without actually being one. This cued a succession of Anglo-Polish attempts to develop the working concepts of the FG42 into something shorter and perhaps even lighter. As Britain began to emerge from postwar austerity and it became obvious that the end of the Second World War had not ushered in an era of global peace and security, the idea of adopting some kind of bullpup multi-purpose weapon for the British Army took hold and has never really gone away.

The two most famous examples of this are the EM2 rifle of the 1950s and the SA80 rifle in British service today. The stories of these are told in detail, but also in the context of what went before and what was going on elsewhere during their development. John Garand, for example, designed a bullpup rifle to replace his own M1 design as the US army’s service rifle, but retired before it could be developed for trials, and this was not the only American bullpup design being put forward. Other, notably successful bullpup rifles have served in other countries -and, in Australia, they still do.

The book deals with the problems encountered by British small arms development programmes in some detail, but if one reads between the lines many of these come down to the discipline of materials science being largely ignored by those taking the decisions. This problem is actually endemic to British defence projects in general and a cynic might say that it’s the one way of sabotaging projects that senior officials know they can get away with (they certainly succeeded in sabotaging the Valiant bomber). It’s certainly not that Britain as a country lacks materials scientists or that learning about materials science is unpopular with the general population: J.E Gordon’s eminently accessible materials science book “The New Science of Strong Materials” (Or Why we Don’t Fall Through the Floor), first published in 1968, went through several new editions throughout the seventies. Mr Ferguson’s book details how an attempt by Cranfield University to lighten the design of the SA80 by adopting wonder materials such as carbon fibre and titanium saved a total of four ounces: this may have disappointed the University of Cranfield but it will have surprised no-one who has read Professor Gordon’s book, which teaches the distinction between strength and stiffness. In any case, many mechanical firearms components come with a minimum weight, below which they will not work. This is one of several concepts which decision-makers seem not to grasp.

This is a well-researched book, exploiting a rich supply of factual material and actual weapons to the full. It will, therefore, be disappointing to those seeking to use it to promote one strongly-held opinion or another. But as a way of understanding what actually went on, it is perfectly fit for purpose.

Review Copyright (c) Matthew K. Spencer 2021, all rights reserved.