Making the Cat Laugh : One Woman's Journal of Single Life on the Margins

This is one woman's journal of single life on the margins. For seven long years, starting in "The Listener" in 1988 and continuing in "The Times" and "Woman's Journal", Lynne Truss has been trying to make her cat laugh. It has been an uphill task, which is why she deserves this book, a recognition of outstanding courage in the face of futility. Along the way, "Margins", "Single of Life" and "One Woman's Journal" have collected a band of devoted fans, yet still the cat remains unimpressed, we understand he may not even show up at the launch party. Never have so many jokes about Kitbits been found in such concentration as in "Making the Cat Laugh". But under the headings such as 'The Single Woman Considers Going Out but Doesn't Fancy the Hassle' and 'The Single Woman Stays at Home and Goes Quietly Mad', we discover a writer not only obsessed with cats, but prone to over-reacting generally - to news stories (Man 'eaten' in gruesome cat horror) shopping, passive smoking, Christmas, coupledom, boyfriends, snails, sheds, Andre Agassi, cooking instructions, requests of 'How's the novel going?' and personal remarks of any kind.

Lynne Truss is one of Britain's top comic writers and is the author of the number one bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves. It has sold over three million copies worldwide and won the British Book of the Year award in 2004. She has also written four comic books, Going Loco, Making the Cat Laugh, Tennyson's Gift and With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, all available from Profile Books. She is a regular presenter on Radio 4, a Times columnist and a guest presenter for many other programmes. She lives in Brighton.