Mr. Katō Plays Family (2018) by Milena Michiko Flašar #WITMonth2026 #20BOS26

 

👴🏼 Milena Michiko Flašar, who wrote of Mr. Katō Plays Family, is a Japanese-Austrian author who currently lives in Vienna. She was born from A Japanese mother and an Austrian father. This book is originally written in Germany, and is translated to English by Caroline Froh. This would be my second and last book for #WITMonth2026. Mr. Katō Plays Family tells the story of a recently retired Japanese man in his sixties, who lives with his wife in a suburban town of Japan. The story opens with our protagonist on the way back from hospital after his routine checkup for his heart - the report is good - but nevertheless, he wished there's something wrong with his heart, so that there's something to talk about with his wife. From then on, we learn how Mr. Kato's marriage has been going sour for sometime. He's been turning a bit curmudgeonly of late; his wife wants him out of the house; and there are Mr. Kato's unfulfilled dreams, like having a dog - a Pomeranian whom he would have called Shiro - which idea disliked and dismissed by his wife. We learn that there are so many regrets on things unsaid and undone, and Mr. Kato is at lost how to repair it or begin anew. 👴🏼 On that fateful morning, when Mr. Kato took a rest at a cemetery, during his walk, he met an extraordinary girl. She is called Mie, and she appreciates Mr. Kato's ingenuity and improvisation skill which he inadvertently shows when he thinks nobody's looking. Mie turns out to be owning a business called Happy Family, which specializing in providing people whom you can hire to act and play roles in real families. Intrigued, Mr. Kato was hired by Mie, and his first assignment is to be a grandfather to a little boy who misses his own who never shows up. Apparently Mr. Kato did very well in his role-playing - a natural, you might say. However fluent he communicates with families who hired him, still, he fails to communicate either important or mundane things he wishes to say to his own family. 👴🏼 The idea to describe the RHS (Retired Husband Syndrome) that affected either the wife or Mr. Kato - the retiree himself - through the contradictory condition between real and acting lives, is a clever idea. Add that with the writing structure of alternating real dialogues with stream of consciousness, makes this story feels more poignant. In the end, although the idea of people wanting 'stand-in' people to act as their relatives is both rather implausible (someone is bound to realize that they were not the real person, isn't it?) and disturbing (are human beings have become that pathetic that we need actors to play our roles?) I really-really wish this phenomenon is just the actor's imagination, and not the real condition. Because if it is, the human race is nearly doomed! As a reading experience, this book is neither wonderful nor bad; it provides, at least, some funny scenes and quite heartwarming in regard of the family-and-love theme. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2

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#WITMonth2026 hosted by Meytal @ Biblibio

20 Books of Summer 2026 hosted by Annabel @ AnnaBookBel