Samuel de Juan is a mid-30s professor living a solitary life when a cat shows up on his doorstep on New Year’s. Little did he know (ha!), by opening his door to that cat, Samuel would open his life up to a whole group of new people.

(Sorry, “little did he know” makes me think of Stranger Than Fiction every time.)

I hardly know what to say about this book. It’s difficult to place, genre-wise – kind of a cross between literary, surreal, and rom-com. The writing is simple and sparse (though it’s hard to know for sure, given this is translated from the Spanish), and the characters are very larger than life. Reading it felt almost like reading a dream, but with enough of a consistent story that it was still followable.

The experience was interesting, and ultimately enjoyable. I feel like I’ve read other books that are similar, or that gave off that same strange realism/surrealism mix, but I can’t pinpoint any specifically. It was the sort of book that gave me an impression of the writing styled to match the narrator’s internal state, which in itself was fascinating.