Product Description

Lucy O' Rourke, is a photographer whose work takes her around the world. She is smart, funny, competent and loveable - but she does make some very bad decisions...We know all about these, and we root for Lucy as her peripatetic life takes her on the most dangerous of rivers, into the eye of the hurricane, and through some romantic and some less than romantic encounters with men. Prepare to laugh and hold your breath and join Lucy O' Rourke on her way to the 'right life'. Her first book made us weak with pleasure and recognition. WALTZING THE CAT is set to do the same as Lucy searches for a place in the world that feels like home (Mr Right an optional extra).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #284614 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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
'Bold, energetic and exhilarating ... a stunning, stunning writer. Her feel for landscapes both actual and metaphorical is so accurate and so acute that you feel you could reach out and touch every part of her stories' THE TIMES 'Beautifully written. There are few writers who so startlingly and convincingly bring the American landscape roaring off the page ... an exhilarating, moving and often very funny book' SUNDAY TIMES 'Funny, sad, compassionate and true as secrets whispered between friends at night' AMY BLOOM 'Believe me, the story WALTZING THE CAT sticks to your ribs like fried eggs and cream: it's fat with meaning and tastes oh so sinfully good' WASHINGTON POST

About the Author
Pam Houston is a part-time river and hunting guide, but not a hunter. She has contributed frequently to American magazines, and her short story 'How to Talk to a Hunter', was selected by Richard Ford for Best American Short Stories 1990.She lives in a high valley in Colorado, a place she calls the Roof of America.

Customer Reviews

Full of heady mountain air and the clarity of wild water.
Pam Houston writes with a strength and realism which lights up the natural world of North America from within. When I closed the final cover, I was so well acquainted with the main protagonist, Lucy O'Rourke, that I searched for her face in the passing crowd. A physical, outdoor woman, femininely complex and intelligent. Lightly, firmly, Pam Houston presents a woman in Paradise. "Is that what they tell you in America, that Paradise is a place without pain?" I haven't been so infatuated with a book since "The Songlines" by Bruce Chatwin.