Kitten
A debut novel about mothers, class, love, and the dizzying task of becoming yourself
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
'Strange, playful and intimate . . . I didn't want it to end'
LUCY ROSE, author of The Lamb
'Soft and sharp, totally in control, utterly deranged. I lapped it up'
KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE, author of Almost Life
'A spellbinding story . . . it will play on your mind for days'
ORE AGBAJE-WILLIAMS, author of The Three of Us
'A fresh, funny, and totally bewitching girl-meets-cat love story'
GINA CHUNG, author of Sea Change
A magnetic novel about a young woman who falls in love with her boyfriend's cat.
Katie hasn't spoken to her mother in a year when her boyfriend James introduces her to his cat Silver. A small, vulnerable, incorrigible ball of need, Silver's acceptance of Katie cracks open something inside of her: an unravelling begins.
Fresh out of college and far from home, Katie is desperate to skirt the demands of adult life - especially because, as she promised her mother, the plan was to never grow up in the first place. Luckily, she has James: self-assured, generous, and seemingly happy to make decisions for them both.
When they go on holiday to James's family's seaside home, Katie's attachment to Silver grows. 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 misbehave spectacularly, be childish, be gross, and still get fed, seems to have the life Katie increasingly longs for. But as their bond intensifies, Katie's other relationships reach tipping points. Soon, Katie must come to terms with what she really wants, and what she might have to risk to get it.
Delicately playful and unexpectedly heartfelt, Kitten is a sensitive reckoning with the allure of helplessness and the uncertainty of becoming yourself in a world that is as disorienting as it is full of hope and connection.
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.
