Kitten
A Novel
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An enchanting debut novel about a young woman whose growing obsession with her boyfriend’s cat opens new possibilities for her life—but not without threatening to unravel it.
“Abound in wit and restraint, Kitten explores the funny yet unsettling complexities of modern love. . . . A fearless debut!”—Weike Wang, author of Chemistry
“Yu’s novel is both a kind of Gen Z parable of existential nihilism and a psychologically deft portrait of mother-daughter trauma. . . . This spiky debut refuses to be boxed in.”—Kirkus Reviews
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • A BUSTLE AND MARIE CLAIRE BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH • A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: Harper’s Bazaar, Our Culture, Debutiful, Electric Lit, The Millions
Katie is far from home, fresh out of college, and desperate to skirt the demands of adult life. It doesn’t help that she’s no longer speaking to her mother. Or that she owes her roommate and closest friend months of rent money. Luckily, her self-assured, generous boyfriend James seems happy to make decisions for them both. When James takes Katie on vacation to his family’s seaside house, he brings Silver, his childhood cat, and Katie discovers a sudden, strange, and giddy connection.
Silver doesn’t mind that Katie can’t seem to get a job, hold her own at dinner parties, or make amends with her mother. Silver, who gets to lie around all day, misbehave spectacularly, act cute, be gross, and still get fed, seems to have the life Katie increasingly longs for. Soon enough, they’re inseparable, and something inside Katie begins to crack open . . . or maybe just crack.
Because if Katie has learned anything from her mother, it’s that devotion comes at a price. As Katie's affection for Silver deepens, her other relationships begin to falter, until she’s forced to confront what she really desires from life—and what she might have to risk to get it.
Darkly playful, wryly observant, and unexpectedly heartfelt, this debut from an irresistible new voice in fiction is a timeless reckoning with the uncertainty of becoming a person in an age that is as disorienting and lonely as it is full of hope and promise.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yu's deeply felt debut finds Katie, a young Chinese American woman and recent college grad, adrift in New York City, financially precarious and unable to muster the professional or personal ambitions being so diligently pursued by her peers. The defining relationship of her life has been with her mother, a troubled woman who lives alone in Katie's hometown of Little Rock, Ark. Enter James, a slightly older copywriter with a family vacation home in the seaside town of Holme who's taking care of his parents' cat, Silver. Katie, recently out of a job, travels with James and Silver to Holme. There, she feels out of place among James's moneyed family friends and develops an unusually strong connection with Silver, even tasting the pet's food and role-playing as a cat during sex with James. Near the end of the visit, she makes a consequential decision she can't take back. Some elements feel a bit far-fetched, such as James's tolerance of Katie's increasingly strange behavior, but Yu incisively depicts the complexities of Katie and her mother's relationship ("I took something from my mother by being born, both her youth and her future"). There's much to admire in this offbeat tale.
