Waltzing the Cat - Softcover

Pam Houston

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860497896 ISBN 13: 9781860497896

Publisher: Time Warner Books Uk, 2000

Synopsis

Lucy O' Rourke, is a photographer whose work takes her around the world. She is smart, funny, competent and loveable - but she does make some very bad decisions...We know all about these, and we root for Lucy as her peripatetic life takes her on the most dangerous of rivers, into the eye of the hurricane, and through some romantic and some less than romantic encounters with men. Prepare to laugh and hold your breath and join Lucy O' Rourke on her way to the 'right life'. Her first book made us weak with pleasure and recognition. WALTZING THE CAT is set to do the same as Lucy searches for a place in the world that feels like home (Mr Right an optional extra).

About this title

Review

When Lucy O'Rourke was 2 her father threw her into the New Jersey surf. She passed the flotation test then, but nature--wild and human--has been subjecting her to variations on the theme ever since. True, the thirtyish photographer-protagonist of Waltzing the Cat is drawn to dangerous locales, from the Ecuadorian jungle where murderous grand caymans lie at the ready to the Provincetown beaches where her latest nominee for Mr. Right seems only a hair less lethal. But as she has yet to learn, the most elemental struggles begin at home. In the heartbreaking title story, Lucy's classically disconnected WASP family channels all available affection through Suzette, their roly-poly feline (29 pounds and counting!). "The cat and I were always friends until I left home and fell in love with men who raised dogs and smelled like foreign places. Now when I come home for a visit the cat eyes me, territorial, like an only child."

Lucy's survival strategies also desert her when it comes to men. They're trouble when they don't want her, more so when they do. In addition, they're adept at giving the answer "no"--a trait they share with the males in Pam Houston's equally fine first book, Cowboys Are My Weakness. In "The Whole Weight of Me," for instance, Lucy's latest lad yet again eases himself out of things when she tells him she wants to see him soon. "'That would be great,' he said, in a voice that said clear as a bell that it wouldn't. And it was like someone had spliced together the wrong rolls of film from two different movies; it was that instantaneous how everything changed."

A less graceful, less wry writer would not be able to map Lucy's self-conscious journey of discovery with such ease and agility. Houston's adventurer is the sort of woman who runs into Carlos Castaneda after she's just missed a plane.

What everybody says now is, How do you know it was really him, like that is the pertinent question. It was him, I say, like I learned in graduate school, or another man by the same name. I mean, is it less interesting if it was just some guy who thought he was Carlos Castenada, or more?

On the other hand, she's also the type who gets recognized while checking out a display of animal-shaped dildos--"the kangaroo, the rabbit, the great brown bear, noses and ears turned inward, poised at the ready"--in the first sex shop she's dared to enter. Wherever Lucy is, her creator--often in the space of a single sentence--can quickly fill in the most crushing experience with a mix of longing and expertly timed comedy. --Kerry Fried

About the Author

Pam Houston is a part-time river and hunting guide, but not a hunter. She has contributed frequently to American magazines, and her short story 'How to Talk to a Hunter', was selected by Richard Ford for Best American Short Stories 1990.She lives in a high valley in Colorado, a place she calls the Roof of America.

About this edition

• Publisher: Time Warner Books Uk
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1860497896
• ISBN 13: 9781860497896
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288