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

Truss, Lynne

3.31

274 ratings by Goodreads

9781861977540: Making The Cat Laugh: One Woman's Journal of Single Life on the Margins

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1861977549 ISBN 13: 9781861977540

Publisher: Profile Books, 2004

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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.

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Review:

Making the Cat Laugh collects the various humorous columns that demonstrated just how witty Lynn Truss always was even before she decided to concentrate her formidable intelligence and sharpness on punctuation. Fans of Eats, Shoots & Leaves will recognise the flights of comic invention and exaggeration: what might otherwise be quite conventional pieces about living alone in your 30s with a cat become vivid and original. The self-mockery never becomes self-indulgently masochistic even when she realises, for example, that a friend who had told her to see Batman Returns and remarked that Truss reminds her of Catwoman, is thinking of the batty spinster, not the reborn super-villainous sex-bomb.

There is a visual precision to the jokes here as well as a verbal one--casual remarks about Quentin Tarantino when he was still comparatively obscure have remained accurate and current. This is a collection that passes the standard, but still useful, test for collections of comic journalism: even read in bulk (for example on public transport) it's still funny enough to make you laugh out loud. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

A small masterpiece of comedy...with abundant close observation, the familiar is made fresh...A continual hoot -- The Times

A truly inventive comic writer ... You should not attempt to read Making the Cat Laugh while travelling on public transport -- The Irish Times

[Lynne Truss is] a social humorist of sharp insight and startling candour -- Scotland on Sunday

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