Waltzing the Cat by Pam Houston
Are We Reading The Same Book?
When Lucy ORourke was 2 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. But as she has yet to learn, the most
elemental struggles begin at home. In the heartbreaking title story, Lucys
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. Lucys survival
strategies also desert her when it comes to men. Theyre trouble when
they dont want her, more so when they do. In addition, theyre adept at
giving the answer no--a trait they share with the males in Pam Houstons
equally fine first book, Cowboys Are My Weakness. In The Whole Weight
of Me, for instance, Lucys 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 wouldnt. And it was like
someone had spliced together the wrong rolls of film from two different
movies; it was that instantaneous how everything changed. A less
graceful, less wry writer would not be able to map Lucys self-conscious
journey of discovery with such ease and agility. Houstons adventurer is
the sort of woman who runs into Carlos Castaneda after shes just missed
a plane. What everybody says now is, How do you know it was really
him, like that is the pertinent question. It was him, I say, like I learned in
graduate school, or another man by the same name. I mean, is it less
interesting if it was just some guy who thought he was Carlos Castenada,
or more? On the other hand, shes also the type who gets recognized
while checking out a display of animal-shaped dildos--the kangaroo, the
rabbit, the great brown bear, noses and ears turned inward, poised at the
ready--in the first sex shop shes dared to enter. Wherever Lucy is, her
creator--often in the space of a single sentence--can quickly fill in the most
crushing experience with a mix of longing and expertly timed comedy.
--Kerry Fried
Personal Review: Waltzing the Cat by Pam Houston
I'm puzzled by the reviewers that swooned over "Cowboys are my
Weakness" and hate this current title.

"Cowboys," written by Houston in her late 20s, are stories by someone
who's just found her voice and is trying it out. They are light stories, but
Houston is hiding her feelings behind the adventures themselves.
In "Waltzing the Cat," the author is ten years older with a lot of
introspection (and apparently good psychotherapy) under her belt. We still
get some of the amazing adventures, but we also get to see Houston
develop emotionall, through her alter ego/main character Lucy. It's more
about how these adventures affect her, what memories they dredge up,
what she learns from them. Houston's style has evolved into an unusual
mix between the classic "women's confessional" and terse, Hemmingway-
ish Western stories. It works, and it works beautifully.
You must understand that THIS BOOK IS NOT A NOVEL, but a set of
related short stories that occur only roughly in chronological order, NOT
chapters. Other reviewers found the book "disjointed," I myself did not.
Because they are separate stories, I didn't find it odd that the character felt
differently, even contradictory, about things at different time and in different
stories.
I read all three of Houston's books over the weekend, and I can highly
recommend all of them, but to me, "Waltzing the Cat" was the best of the
three, just nosing out her nonfictional essay collection "A Little More About
Me," which in turn just nosed out "Cowboys are my Weakness."
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