Here Kitty Kitty: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jardine Libaire (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2004

Lee is the consummate party girl, living a decidedly consequence-free existence. She has the right clothes-the Helmut Lang heels and vintage Dior dresses-the right job managing a stylish SoHo restaurant, the right shabby-chic apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, and the right pager number to get the right drugs. She even has the right boyfriend-a wealthy Frenchman who bails her out of trouble whenever she teeters too close to the edge. Lee knows youth and beauty can only protect her from her wild life for so long. But when the lights go down at closing time, the energy of the city begins to pulse. It is a call she can't resist, and she follows it to backrooms and warehouse raves, to loft parties and after-hours clubs, fueled by the liquids and powders whose names begin to blur, pursuing the elusive thrills of the New York night. Libaire's voice, like her heroine, is tough, seductive, and hard-hitting, and she paints a city that only the young and reckless experience-a place where glamour and danger are just flip sides of the same thrilling coin.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

They say the best nonfiction reads like fiction. But is the reverse also true? It would seem so after reading this gorgeously written debut novel, whose narrator is so keenly evoked that her reminiscences read like a memoir. Lee is one of New York's party girls extraordinaire. She's also a complete train wreck. She manages a trendy Tribeca restaurant yet can't pay the rent on a railroad flat in Brooklyn's hipster ghetto. Not many salaries could support her ravenous appetite for drugs or her taste for white knee-length furs from Bergdorf's. Still in mourning over her mother's death two years ago, Lee likens herself to a pint of raspberries: "On top the ruby berries looked juicy. Unwrapped and spilled into the colander, they revealed undersides black with rot." In deftly rendered scenes and flashbacks, Libaire introduces us to the eccentrics who occupy Lee's life: Yves, her French sugar daddy; Kelly, an enigmatic wanderer; Belinda, her reformed best friend. She's able to capture a character's essence in a single, lovely phrase, particularly Lee's mother: "Guests would arrive at eight and find her in a damp bikini, only beginning to scour cookbooks for ideas. But the night would be unforgettable." Laced with musings about art and marked by unexpected metaphors ("Drugs turned the cardboard box of an ordinary day into a honeycomb, dripping and blond"), the book summons consistently powerful images. But like a sloppy night of boozing recalled the morning after, some readers will wonder what the point was. More of an extended character study than a plot-focused narrative, it floats along on a cloud of Lee's narcissism, celebrating "poverty and dependence" as glamorous, despite efforts to convince the reader otherwise.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Soho restaurant manager and bedraggled party girl Lee is beginning to wonder exactly when her joie de vivre morphed into mania. Every night she staggers home in her Helmut Lang heels after drinking and drugging her way through the evening. She has stopped making art; no longer hangs out with her former partner in crime, Belinda; and has been abandoned by her lover, who's off to culinary school in Paris. She's taken up with a much older, wealthy man, although their relationship seems to consist of dining on Kumamoto oysters at every high-end restaurant in town. Then she meets Kelly, a well-traveled ex-surfer who is slowly and painfully trying to put his life back together after losing a good friend to suicide. With his help, Lee starts to think about refashioning her life. First-novelist Libaire jams her paragraphs with fractured images of the cityscape, brand-name clothing, trendy neighborhoods, and after-hours clubs. Some readers will be put off by her distinctive style, but quite a few others will be seduced by her cinematic writing and her vulnerable hipsters. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (May 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316736880
• ISBN-13: 978-0316736886
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,012,678 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Striking, Beautiful, July 8, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Here Kitty Kitty: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a truly absorbing debut, in equal parts potent and bewitching. Libaire reads the filigree of New York City like someone who has intimately traced its edges and mapped each inviting curl.

The best parts of the book, though, are maybe the more quiet episodes: the pure and clinging elegance of Libaire's prose comes out when she's writing about wet fields, cats, and wildflowers. The tremolo of the city relaxes into small private moments; summer is languid and heady, glimmering with wine and fireflies.

I can't say enough about this author's talent. Libaire writes with a plangent, poignant thunder that would stun but for the subtle dexterity of her voice. This is a book to be read and then reread, held close.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best writing I've read this year..., May 28, 2006

By 

Rebecca Johnson "The Rebecca Review" (Washington State) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Here Kitty Kitty: A Novel (Paperback)

Lee is an edgy artistic Cinderella presented in a series of images portraying various facets of her sensory existence. Like a visually satisfying movie, her life plays out in contrasts with pure moonlit swims in seas of memory. By page one I had laughed and cried. By page seven I loved Lee in all her vulnerability, so innocent at heart, yet so famililar with the urban life.

Jardine Libaire's descriptive writing shows striking powers of observation beyond the normal recognition of life's complexity. Vertical pieces of thought paint in slivers as the story evolves like a montage of memories. The vibrancy of the portrait forming is cast in shades of lighting only an artist's sensibility could master.

"Then he'd gotten the makings of Mexican hot chocolate at a deli. He managed to use three pots, a couple knives, and a few spoons. Left chocolate shavings on the counter, cinnamon and burned milk on the stove. The sun had vanished, and he cooked in the dark. The only light was the violet blossom of gas flame." ~pg. 167

Stream-of-consciousness writing unravels Lee in her beauty and rite of passage through emotional complexity. She is loveable and running from herself into pleasures. Lost in sensuality and moments, she evolves and awakens, captured in silky prose. Memories of Lee's mother are nostalgic in beauty and contrast with the life Lee throws herself into with abandon.

Jardine Libaire's seductive writing style slips you into a calm solitude where splashes of images layer the story's canvas.

~The Rebecca Review

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent work, September 16, 2004

By 

NYC - 555 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Here Kitty Kitty: A Novel (Hardcover)

I picked this book up after hearing about it from many of my friends and I was definitely not disappointed. I was intrigued by Lee's character and her inability to make the correct decisions for herself - reminds me of many of my NYC friends. In addition, the prose is absolutely beautiful, especially for a chic lit novel.