The Cat Tender Martin Drapkin 9781457547768 Books
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The Cat Tender is a work of literary fiction. It is primarily a women's novel, but deals with themes and issues that affect everyone.
Maggie Mullen is a twenty-seven-year-old, somewhat overweight, woman who lives alone in Madison, Wisconsin, with her cat, Lucy. She supports herself by taking care of cats when their owners are away. While at those houses, she likes to watch reality TV shows about pregnancy and babies and teen mothers. Every night, Maggie takes a hot bath in her oversized claw foot tub, with sleepy Lucy comfortable on the closed toilet seat lid beside her. In her tub, Maggie drinks Chardonnay and listens to (and fantasizes about)her beloved Frank Sinatra as she thinks about things. She wonders and speculates about the inner lives of her clients. She thinks about relationships, whether or not to have children, families--her own and others, and seeking vengeance against cat abusers. She worries that she'll end up as one of those eccentric cat ladies. She's unsure about the direction she wants to go in life.
Maggie loves her mother, Lillian, and the two of them share a passion for painting watercolors. But she dislikes her father, Warren, because he doesn't understand or appreciate her and--moreso--because he's so rude and disrespectful toward Lillian. Maggie fantasizes dire outcomes for her father.
Maggie's reluctantly agreed to be maid of honor at her younger sister's upcoming wedding, but she's dreading everything about it--especially giving a toast at the reception. Her main goal as maid of honor is to do as little as possible without offending or alienating her sister, Mindy, or their mother. As the bridal shower and the bachelorette party and, finally, the wedding day approach, Maggie's anxiety level increases. Her carefully constructed life has become more complicated than she's hoped. She can't wait for the wedding to be over with.
The Cat Tender Martin Drapkin 9781457547768 Books
**Spoilers****I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**
I started out enjoying this book a lot. It made me laugh. It's all first person, from Maggie's perspective. And it's always her remembering her day or whatever crosses her mind in the evening while sitting in the tub with her cat and wine nearby. She talks to her cat, and her job is taking care of other peoples cats. Thus the title, The Cat Tender.
After awhile, though...the way he had Maggie always calling herself massive, fat, basically any name for chubby you can think of, that started to wear on me. I'm fat, I know it, but that doesn't mean it's on my mind 24-7, or that I use one of those descriptions for anything I might do. I don't think, "I'm going to shave my fat legs." I think, "time to shave my legs." I can understand her having low self-esteem, that is part of her personality, but everyone has limits. And quite frankly, size 16 isn't all that fat either. That's probably why it really started bugging me.
The other part that made this book drag is the lack of an arching plot. There's no resolution to anything. It's just the same at the beginning as it is at the end. Maggie doesn't stand up to her father, doesn't have that conversation with her mother. Hell, she doesn't even ask out the guy she thinks she might like. Then there's the silly lady jealousy that honestly isn't a real thing. Women aren't going to call some other woman a slut for talking to a guy they aren't even sure they want to be with anyway. I don't know, maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed pretty clear Maggie didn't want to date the guy, so why would she act jealous of him talking to someone?
I liked it to begin with and I did make it all the way through. I liked the character, I'll say that for this author. But he clearly doesn't understand women, especially not overweight women. It felt like a trip downhill from beginning to end. There was juts way too much time spent in Maggie's imagination that never amounted to anything. Let me just finish this by saying, women do NOT refer to themselves nor each other as broads...ever!
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Tags : The Cat Tender [Martin Drapkin] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <span>The Cat Tender</span></i><span><span> </span></span><span>is a work of literary fiction. It is primarily a women's novel,Martin Drapkin,The Cat Tender,Dog Ear Publishing,1457547767,FICTION General,Fiction: general & literary,General & Literary Fiction,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
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The Cat Tender Martin Drapkin 9781457547768 Books Reviews
Princess Fuzzypants here
Maggie is an angry woman when her quiet and simple life is disrupted by being asked to be the Maid of Honour for her sister's wedding. The sister is everything that Maggie is not and that brings out a lot of passive-aggressive humour, much of which is lopped right back at her. Some of it is funny. Some of it is bitter. Some of it is mean.
But when Maggie tends her kitties or has long conversations with Lucy, her feline soulmate, she is a different person altogether. She is kind and patient and thoughtful and very, very loving. As a cat myself, I can appurrciate her reactions to those of us of the feline purrsuasion. As she tells their stories and the interactions that she has with each of them, the book goes from acerbic to charming. She realizes that she is happiest with her cats, her food and Frank Sinatra.
She's a complex character whom we alternatively like and dislike. Mostly we can empathize as we see the elements that created who she is.
When Maggie got too bogged down in her resentment, I would skim, waiting for the next kitty to appear. For that reason, I give it four purrs and one paw up.
Martin Drapkin’s third book is a masterpiece of introspection, yet I being a man myself wonder how much I can trust a man’s writing in the first person the intimate thoughts of a twenty-something year old, overweight woman reclining in her bathtub, drinking a glass of chardonnay, contemplating lighting up a joint to go with it, sharing those thoughts with her cat, Lucy (“Lucy-Goosey”) curled up on one of her (Lucy’s) favorite spots, the toilet seat. The answer is, it doesn’t matter. This is a fun and thoughtful book. It’s a novel of sorts, if you consider a woman’s comments to her cat over a few hours in the tub a novel. Nothing much happens in the way of a plot, except for Maggie’s recount of her recent experience as bride’s maid for her sister and what she thinks of the wedding rehearsal and the wedding and the reception afterward.
About two chapters into it, I began to think, where have I seen this style before? Then it hit me J.D. Salinger. Maggie Mullen is Holden Caulfield. In a gossipy tone, she wonders about the clients she cat-sits for, “They’d tell me their lame story, which I don’t imagine I’d find all that fascinating…Then we’d go to their tedious wedding story. Yawn.” (p. 7) Or, complaining about the wedding to come, “So the stupid dress is going to set me back $240…and I don’t know what the hell else.” (24)
Maggie’s infatuation with Frank Sinatra provides a string of continuity through the novel. The chapters are all titled after snippets from Sinatra songs. Maggie describes her ideal moment, “You and me and Sinatra and chardonnay and maybe a little weed. It’s all good, Goose.” (141) Maggie isn’t really lonely. She lives alone with Lucy and dreams of her ideal man, “He should put down his damned phone now and again and actually look at me and make eye contact.” (139) She finds sincerity in Sinatra but not in other songsters. Of a medley version of “Over the Rainbow” and “Wonderful World,” she complains, “I don’t much mind the “Over the Rainbow” part, but that other, the “Wonderful World” deal, is majorly irritating. All that crap about seeing skies of blue and trees of green and ‘the colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky’ and friends shaking hands who’re really saying ‘I love you.’ Oh, puke!” Holden Caulfield?
The theme of sincerity is nicely summed up near the end, “I said I was sorry that Grandma Liz couldn’t be here for Mindy’s special day. At least that was sincere. Mom, seated at the parents’ table nearby, smiled when I said that. But Dad….” (159)
The ending is marvelous. Still in the tub, as we met her and Lucy on page one, Maggie imagines herself in an intimate moment with Frank Sinatra in the bar at three in the morning “Just then, Joe would return from the back room. I raise my glass of chardonnay and look at my sleepy cat on her closed toilet seat lid. ‘Well, here’s one for my baby.’ I take a swallow and then another. ‘And one more for the road.’” (181)
There is much more that could be said about this book, but you should read it for yourself for fun and for the sake of a mature literary work.
**Spoilers**
**I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**
I started out enjoying this book a lot. It made me laugh. It's all first person, from Maggie's perspective. And it's always her remembering her day or whatever crosses her mind in the evening while sitting in the tub with her cat and wine nearby. She talks to her cat, and her job is taking care of other peoples cats. Thus the title, The Cat Tender.
After awhile, though...the way he had Maggie always calling herself massive, fat, basically any name for chubby you can think of, that started to wear on me. I'm fat, I know it, but that doesn't mean it's on my mind 24-7, or that I use one of those descriptions for anything I might do. I don't think, "I'm going to shave my fat legs." I think, "time to shave my legs." I can understand her having low self-esteem, that is part of her personality, but everyone has limits. And quite frankly, size 16 isn't all that fat either. That's probably why it really started bugging me.
The other part that made this book drag is the lack of an arching plot. There's no resolution to anything. It's just the same at the beginning as it is at the end. Maggie doesn't stand up to her father, doesn't have that conversation with her mother. Hell, she doesn't even ask out the guy she thinks she might like. Then there's the silly lady jealousy that honestly isn't a real thing. Women aren't going to call some other woman a slut for talking to a guy they aren't even sure they want to be with anyway. I don't know, maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed pretty clear Maggie didn't want to date the guy, so why would she act jealous of him talking to someone?
I liked it to begin with and I did make it all the way through. I liked the character, I'll say that for this author. But he clearly doesn't understand women, especially not overweight women. It felt like a trip downhill from beginning to end. There was juts way too much time spent in Maggie's imagination that never amounted to anything. Let me just finish this by saying, women do NOT refer to themselves nor each other as broads...ever!
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