The Cat - Softcover

Ravel, Edeet

3.72

303 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143183524 ISBN 13: 9780143183525

Publisher: Penguin Books Canada, 2012

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From acclaimed author Edeet Ravel comes a profound and heart-wrenching story that captures the essence of grief and hope in the midst of tragedy.

Single mother Elise is completely devoted to her eleven-year-old son; he is her whole world. But that world is destroyed in one terrifying moment when her son is killed in a car accident just outside their home. Suddenly alone, surrounded by memories, Elise faces a future that feels unspeakably bleak--and pointless.

Lost, angry and desolate, Elise rejects everyone who tries to reach out to her. But as despair threatens to engulf her, she realizes, to her horror, that she cannot join her son: she must take care of his beloved cat. At first she attempts to carry out this task entirely by herself, shut away from a frightening new reality that seems surreal and incomprehensible. But isolation proves to be impossible, and before long others insinuate themselves into her life--friends, enemies, colleagues, neighbours, a former lover--bringing with them the fragile beginnings of survival.

Powerfully moving and deeply humane, The Cat is an unforgettable novel about the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit.

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Review:

"Once I began turning pages, I could hardly put it down. [The Cat] is a precisely realized character study that amounts to an excruciating portrait of maternal grief." - National Post

"In her evocation of grief, and the terrible loneliness of grief that is unfathomable to those who stand at a little distance from it, Edeet Ravel is utterly, heartbreakingly convincing. And in her rendering of the idiosyncratic nature of grief, that strikes each of us differently, she is poignant and compelling." - Joyce Carol Oates

About the Author:

Edeet Ravel is the recipient of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Look for Me and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for A Wall of Light, which was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Canadian/Caribbean Commonwealth Prize. Ten Thousand Lovers was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Koret Jewish Book Award. Her most recent novels are the critically acclaimed Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth and The Last Rain. Edeet was born on a kibbutz in Israel and has a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies.

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