Book Review - Doris Lessing "On Cats"

I think it's safe to say that I have a soft spot for cats.  I wrote here about a neighbourhood cat who adopted us and here about getting our own cat.  There's something about the vulnerable yet independent nature of cats that intrigues me.

Back in December, when I was Christmas shopping for my boyfriend, I absolutely did not buy this book for myself.  No, I really did buy it for him and just happened to borrow it later.  Yes.  That is how it happened.

Anyway, I digress.  Doris Lessing has always been one of my favourite authors after I read The Grass is Singing so I was interested to see how she approached such a potentially schmaltzy subject.

Image via http://www.dorislessing.org

It's a tough read, the polar opposite of Lolz Catz.  Doris Lessing is honest, brutally so at times.  *Spoiler alert*  There's a passage at the beginning of the book where she describes the culling of a large number of feral cats on the farm where she was brought up.  This has been mentioned in many disgusted comments on Amazon etc but although I can't say I enjoyed reading it, I appreciated the fearless self examination.  

This book is a trilogy of three stories - Particularly Cats, about her childhood growing up on a farm in Rhodesia as well as Grey Cat and Black Cat who shared her home in London; Rufus the Survivor (which I don't mind admitting broke my heart) and The Old Age of El Magnifico, the story of the final years of the last cat to share her home.

Image via http://butik.djurtema.se/

I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes from the book...

      "Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.”

Book review - A Street Cat named Bob by James Bowen

One of the reasons I love books are they allow you to see into areas of life that you wouldn't normally experience.

'A Street Cat named Bob' is a wonderful little book.  It's the story of how a mangy ginger tom cat decided to adopt a homeless heroin addict, James, and how the simple fact of having another living being who needed him enabled James to turn his life around and get off the smack.

Image via amazon.com

It's a simple book about ordinary things like how James tried to dissuade Bob from living with him, (but Bob was having none of it), taking the cat for his vaccinations, getting excited about earning a bit of extra money and being able to afford a nice curry & some extra special cat food but there's something life affirming about it.  We all need someone (or some cat) to stick with us in spite of everything and we all need responsibility beyond just taking care of ourselves  to give our lives meaning.

I think I've actually seen James and his cat busking in Covent Garden so it's nice to read about the back story.  That cat was actually giving him high fives! 

Book review - The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

I finished this book by one of my favourite authors, Kate Morton a couple of days ago and I can't stop thinking about it.

Image via http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Secret-Keeper-Kate-Morton/9780330477598

It begins as a fairly standard but well written family mystery novel. A young girl, Laurel, is sitting reading in a tree house on a warm summers day in 1961.  She witnesses something that afternoon which changes her life for ever.  The act that she sees is a lot more 'full on' than is usual for the genre and this was the first sign that this book was going to be different.

Action switches between 2011, the 60's and wartime London as the adult Laurel tries to uncover what actually happened that afternoon and why.  She realises that something happened to her mother, Dorothy during the war which triggered the event she witnessed as a young girl.  I must admit, I very nearly stopped reading the book because I found the character of Dorothy incredibly irritating, manipulative and self absorbed but I continued reading & I'm so glad I did.  The twist at the end of the book is shocking and completely unexpected and yet emotionally satisfying.  It subverts the conventions of the genre in a rather good way.

The Secret Keeper is a very rich, multi layered book - very much my favourite kind of read.  A definite recommendation from me. 

Remembrance Sunday - 11 November

Image via http://www.bbc.co.uk/history

Lest we forget

"Jack Firebrace stood with Arthur Shaw on raised ground near what they called One Tree Hill, watching.  They expected a swift passage, almost unopposed. 

Jack was muttering, Shaw saying nothing at all.  They saw the Scots coming up out of their burrows like raving women in their skirts, dying in ripples across the yellowish-brown soil. They saw the steady tread of the Hampshires as though they had willingly embarked on a slow-motion dance from which they were content not to return.  They saw men from every corner walking, powerless into an engulfing storm.

Their own contribution to the day, the vast hole that had been blown at twenty past seven, had given the enemy ten minutes in which to take their positions at leisure.  By the crater they saw young men dying in quantities that they had not dreamed possible.  They had not fired a shot.

The excess of it made them clutch each other's arms in disbelief.

'They can't let this go on,' said Jack, 'they can't.'

Shaw stood with his mouth open.  He was unmoved by violence, hardened to the mutilation he had seen and inflicted, but what he was watching here was something of a different order.

Please God, let it stop, thought Jack.  Please let them send no more men into this hurricane.

The padre, Horrocks, came and stood with them.  He crossed himself and tried to comfort them with words and prayers.  

Jack turned his face away from what he saw, and he felt something dying in him as he turned.

Shaw had begun to weep.  He held his miner's hands to the sides of his head and the tears coursed down his face.  'Boys, boys,' he kept saying. 'Oh my poor boys.'

Horrocks was trembling.  'This is half of England.  What are we going to do?' he stammered.

Soon they all fell silent.  There was an eruption from the trench below and another wave went up into the pitted landscape, perhaps Essex or Duke of Wellington's, it was impossible to see.  They made no more than ten yards before they began to waver, single men at first picked out, knocked spinning, then more going as they reached the barrage; then, when the machine guns found them, they rippled, like corn through which the wind is passing.  Jack thought of meat, the smell of it.

Horrocks pulled the silver cross from his chest and hurled it from him.  His old reflex still persisting, he fell to his knees, but he did not pray.  He stayed kneeling with his palms spread out on the ground, then lowered his head and covered it with his hands.  Jack knew what had died in him." 

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. 

Sophie Dahl's 'Playing with the Grown-ups' - book review

Image courtesy of Amazon.com

I'll admit, I was initially a little dubious about this book.  I mean how good an author could the super-model granddaughter of Roald Dahl be?


Well, I'll confess, I was wrong.  It's a intelligent, evocative, beautifully written, coming-of-age book about the difficult relationship between a young girl and her mother.


Kitty is the girl in question and Marina is her beautiful, beguiling, selfish mother. The narrative moves between England and the US, as well as past and present.


Dahl isn't afraid to cast an unflinching eye on contradictions in the mother/daughter relationship and show how it's possible to love and hate someone at the same time. Marina is an ex-model who now works as an artist. She's self absorbed, promiscuous... and mentally ill.  She uproots her children, moves to the States and puts Kitty into an unsuitable boarding school on the orders of a rather dubious Swami and well...  to say anymore would ruin the book for you.


Having had a very difficult relationship with my own mother, I found this book strangely cathartic.  Dahl writes with wit and sympathy.  Kitty is a strong character who comes to rely on her own intuition and intelligence to survive an awful situation and accept herself & her mother without reservation.


Highly recommended.  


You can buy in the UK here and the US here.

'How to be Adored' - review

I was initially a little sceptical about this book.  The title struck me as one of those ghastly please-like-me-I'm-quite-nice-really self help books.

Ignore the title.  It's actually a rather wonderful lifestyle guide. The premise is how to be a sophisticated woman, loved by all. Advice is based on tips and techniques from famous women of the stage & screen, both past and present, who've been adored by millions.  Topics range from make-up to relationships.

The book is full of laugh out loud pearls of wisdom from the author;

   'Don't wear Uggs, have platinum blonde hair extensions, use lipliner and carry a chihuahua - this is the working wardrobe of the Wannabe Wag and best avoided if you have any kind of I.Q.'

   'NEVER date a footballer, they may be as rich as Croesus but they will make you look cheap'.

Fantastic stuff.  It's a real tonic in today's shallow, celebrity obsessed world where knickerless girls falling out of cars are held up as role models. 

You can buy it in the U.K. here or the U.S. here.