Waltzing the Cat - Hardcover

Houston, Pam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039302749X ISBN 13: 9780393027495

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998

Synopsis

Ever since the publication of Cowboys Are My Weakness, Pam Houston's fans have clamored for more from the woman with a penchant for the laconic men of the West. Now, in eleven linked fictions featuring a peripatetic photographer named Lucy O'Rourke, Houston serves up once more her charismatic blend of relationships and adventure. This is the story of one woman's struggle for balance in a world that keeps pitching and rolling under her feet. Dislocated geographically and spiritually, Lucy is prone to the wrong decisions at all the critical times; what's more, natural disasters just seem to find her: an accident on a rafting trip in Cataract Canyon, a grand cayman attack in the Amazon, a hurricane in the Gulf Stream-not to mention a few natural disasters in the form of men. A surprise encounter with Carlos Castenada convinces her that she isn't living the right life, and his cryptic message sends her back to her beloved Rocky Mountains. There, on a ranch, she takes comfort in animals, the jagged landscape of Colorado, and the sage advice of women friends; she even gives a man a try. Most important, for the first time she reconnects with parts of herself she didn't remember losing. "Pam Houston taps into our souls," one reader has said. "She could write my diary better than I can."

About this title

Review:

When Lucy O'Rourke was two 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. 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 and 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." --Kerry Fried, Amazon.com

Review:

"The Washington Post Book World" Fat with meaning...tastes oh so sinfully good.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 039302749X
• ISBN 13: 9780393027495
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256