I think I have a thing for well designed book covers 😝
I picked "Lost Cat" up after reading somewhere that all cat owners should read it.
I said I had fallen in love with the cat, and that I was afraid that by exposing him to human love I had awakened in hum a need that was unnatural, that if I left him, he would suffer from the lack of human attention that he never would have known had I not appeared in his yard.
This book made me uncomfortable as I was conflicted on whether it is fair to "rate" a memoir. It started out with Gaitskill's encounter with Gattino (meow) in Italy and we soon learn that she decided to bring him home. This portion of the book explores her attachment to the cat, which was painfully relatable. When he went missing, it felt like half my heart was with Gaitskill.
But I needed to reach for something with a loving touch. I needed to reach even if nothing was physically there within my grasp. I needed to reach even if I touched darkness and sorrow.
A weird tangent from the "storyline" happened as she started to relate Gattino's rescue and disappearance to her relationship with two inner-city kids. This was where she started to lose me as it was giving white saviour complex and I did not find it touching or reflective. She went on for quite awhile, which made it a frustrating reading experience.
But! At the end of the day, she is allowed to grief in whatever way she needs to, and I ultimately did not hate the book. Her writing was deliciously palatable and I could very easily understand her perspective. Experiencing a different kind of grief was eye-opening and it is a book that I might even recommend to people!
