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The Bachelor's Cat : A Love Story

The Bachelor's Cat : A Love Story

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Short and simple, sometimes too much so.
Review: "The Bachelor's Cat" tells the story of a man who adopts a stray kitten and, after forging a friendship with his new pet, is finally able to understand what a loving romantic relationship entails, finally choosing between a manipulative but beautiful woman and a less attractive woman who treats him well.

The book is a fast read; I started and finished it inside of an hour. The unusually short length is appropriate to the work; dragging it out for another hundred or two hundred pages would only have turned a winning tale into a dragging bore. Even at its current length, there are slow sections, such as the pages of description of the bachelor playing with his cat - perhaps these are interesting to cat lovers, but after the first description of the "fishing game" I had heard enough about it.

A more important criticism of this book is the immaturity and pigheadedness of the bachelor himself (which the author, to judge by the book's tone, seems to share). Here we have an adult man, clearly meant to be in his early or middle thirties, who spends months debating whether to be involved with a beautiful woman who cheats on him and makes him miserable, or a woman who makes him happy in every way but who is slightly overweight. The fact that the decision is so difficult, and that his thoughts during the process are so shallow and unattractive, removes any satisfaction from the final, unsurprising outcome.

So there is nothing very mature about this book, either in the characters or in the way they are portrayed. Perhaps the author is exhibiting his genius for simplicity; perhaps this is simply the height of his ability. Either way, the book is short and pleasant and easy to read, especially for cat-lovers.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Learning what is important.
Review: A Bachelor's Cat is a beautifully written love story. It shows how this little feline is able to worm her way into her owner's heart. She makes him look at life differently, and makes him open his heart to other possiblities. Like the fact that he has found real love with a woman who has a less than perfect body. It takes the cat's gentle presence and affection for him to be able to see beyond the exteriors that we often cannot get past.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WELL DONE - I ENJOYED EVERY WORD
Review: A wonderfully done little book. It will take you about an hour our so to read and I must say, it is an hour well spent! I am a sucker for syntax and Mr Hoffman's is a joy to mull. The story is an honest story, warts and all as to the characters involved.
I do hope we get more from Mr Hoffman - thank you for writing this book!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WELL DONE - I ENJOYED EVERY WORD
Review: A wonderfully done little book. It will take you about an hour our so to read and I must say, it is an hour well spent! I am a sucker for syntax and Mr Hoffman's is a joy to mull. The story is an honest story, warts and all as to the characters involved.
I do hope we get more from Mr Hoffman - thank you for writing this book!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A wonderful read. Too close to home for comfort. I love it!
Review: Fortunately or unfortunately this story mirrored my own all too well. The love that develops with trust, the clarity that is found in honesty with and to oneself. The simple beauty and kindnesses found between the covers of this book have in a single day worked to scrape away layers of doubt and to shed rays of light where there was a darkness. I told you, this was too close to home for comfort. Like so many things that I've discovered or uncovered recently, I found The Bachelor's Cat to be "exactly what I needed, when I needed it". "The shared experiance heals both." For this I thank Mr. Hoffman as well as for the warm story itself. I'm sure Mr. Hoffman will be glad to hear that I too, can no longer cast pearls before swine. And yes, my cat received some extra food and strokes tonight. Guess he approves as well.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderfully romantic!
Review: Heroine: plump

The bachelor, who is starving for his art, has a devastating opening exhibit at which he loses both money and his on-again-off-again girlfriend. He returns to his apartment to wallow in self-pity, but soon hears the cries of something even more pitiful than himself: a tiny drenched kitten who is wobbling around on his doorstep. The bachelor takes the kitten in thinking only to keep an eye on it til someone responds to his "for adoption" ad. But he soon learns that cats adopt people, not the other way around, and he is very clearly now a new member of a family. Resigned to his fate, he keeps the cat.

Since his girlfriend is once again MIA, he goes to a bar and looks for someone else to keep him company for a night. He finds himself intrigued by a woman who isn't the least bit his physical type. All of his women have been sleek and chic. This woman was soft and round. But he liked her smile and her sense of humor, and so took her home with him. Like the cat, she decides he is worthy of adoption and soon spends more time at his place than hers, eventually telling him that she'd like to move in. But his slender ex re-enters the picture and soon he is forced to choose between the two very different women: one who hurts him even as she inflames him, the other who comforts and sustains him.

What worked for me:

Despite being such a short story, the characters are well-defined enough for the reader to sympathize with, and the plot interesting enough to keep them turning the pages.

What didn't work for me:

There was one passage I could have done without, but aside from that the book was superb.

Overall:

This witty book is written almost as a parable or a morality play, which is quite original for so romantic and sweet a story. There is minimal dialogue and no names used save for the cat's. Had it been longer the format would have lost its charm, but as it turns out it was just the right length.

While not everyone would want it on their "keeper" shelf, it is certainly worth searching out at the library. Especially if you are a cat person. :^)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderfully romantic!
Review: Heroine: plump

The bachelor, who is starving for his art, has a devastating opening exhibit at which he loses both money and his on-again-off-again girlfriend. He returns to his apartment to wallow in self-pity, but soon hears the cries of something even more pitiful than himself: a tiny drenched kitten who is wobbling around on his doorstep. The bachelor takes the kitten in thinking only to keep an eye on it til someone responds to his "for adoption" ad. But he soon learns that cats adopt people, not the other way around, and he is very clearly now a new member of a family. Resigned to his fate, he keeps the cat.

Since his girlfriend is once again MIA, he goes to a bar and looks for someone else to keep him company for a night. He finds himself intrigued by a woman who isn't the least bit his physical type. All of his women have been sleek and chic. This woman was soft and round. But he liked her smile and her sense of humor, and so took her home with him. Like the cat, she decides he is worthy of adoption and soon spends more time at his place than hers, eventually telling him that she'd like to move in. But his slender ex re-enters the picture and soon he is forced to choose between the two very different women: one who hurts him even as she inflames him, the other who comforts and sustains him.

What worked for me:

Despite being such a short story, the characters are well-defined enough for the reader to sympathize with, and the plot interesting enough to keep them turning the pages.

What didn't work for me:

There was one passage I could have done without, but aside from that the book was superb.

Overall:

This witty book is written almost as a parable or a morality play, which is quite original for so romantic and sweet a story. There is minimal dialogue and no names used save for the cat's. Had it been longer the format would have lost its charm, but as it turns out it was just the right length.

While not everyone would want it on their "keeper" shelf, it is certainly worth searching out at the library. Especially if you are a cat person. :^)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A True Love Story!
Review: I bought this book on a wim, I had nothing to read in the house and this looked like an interesting story. Was I WRONG, it was more then interesting. I loved it. I am so glad I have this book to add to my collection, it will be read over and over. The underlining lesson in this story is how it is possible for everyone to find true love, even if it does take a furry feline to teach it to you!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A deceptively simple love story that snuck up on me
Review: I have short patience, little interest, in reading fiction these days. My plankowner sub to the revived STORY has expired as have subs to several lit quarterlies. I've skipped most of the bestsellers for years, having locked into a routine stingy withattention. I will get the latest Updike or Proulx or Robbins or Pete Dexter but most other names sail onto the remainder table without my having known of their passing. The other day I broke routine. I read a little book I'd never heard of -- and was greatly rewarded. I'll not spoil the story but the set up goes like this: A bachelor has a great relationship with a zipslick girlfriend. She sets his hair on fire (figuratively) and puts him through hoops which action he enjoys. Now and then the girlfriend takes off with another guy for an evening, a week, a couple of months. She never apologizes when she returns and the bachelor always takes her back, gratefully. One day when the girlfriend is gone, the bachelor finds a wet dirty tiny female kitten on his front stoop. Grudgingly, he takes her in and puts a FOUND ad in the weekly shopper. The bachelor plays with the kitten. The kitten plays with the bachelor. The bachelor keeps the kitten, they play some more, the kitten becomes a cat. At this point my reflex said pfooie and in bygone days I would have tossed the book and scrubbed my mind with steel wool. Such treacly manipulation is not for me. I cut my teeth on Faulkner and O'Connor and those angry prophets: life is hard and mean and there is no room for easy sentiment -- but this writer, with a certain style, had caught me. Everything is calm. There is no hyperbole, no direct and hurtful and angry words. The girlfriend is a bitch but the guy wallows in it, is rueful, and welcomes her back because he likes the sex (I think -- the writer never spells is out so explicitly). The writer doesn't say the kitten/cat is adorable and never stoops to anthropomorphizing: it's just a feline doing the way they do -- but the description is calm, observant, absent nonsense. Far different than my favorites who can turn a glance into terror, make a simple whisper into a scream. The bachelor meets a *heavy woman.* Much much different than the girlfriend. They boink. No big deal except this: he likes boinking the girlfriend better than the heavy woman but somehow (and you had to have been there and if you read this book with care, you surely will remember having been there) -- but somehow, boinking with the heavy woman is satisfying on a deeper level. No DHL probing of the animal soul here; just honest, calm observation. But what happens is quite satisfactory to me. I found there is much to learn from a certain style. So, for an example to study, I humbly recommend THE BACHELOR'S CAT ron

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Kit Lit
Review: I loved the book. The last chapter almost pulled the same manipulative ending as Breath, Eyes, Memory and Friendship Cake but thankfully didn't. Given the photograph on the back of the book, I have to wonder if the author was writing in part about himself. It was nice to see the Bachelor evolve as a character as the kitten brought out the best in him. Anyone who liked this book would also like Clevland Amory's books and James Herriot's Cat Stories. With so many of these sentimental books about men and their cats, do they count as a genre-"kit lit" perhaps?


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