Tomcat in Love (AUTHOR SIGNED) [Import] [Hardcover]

Tim O'Brien (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: London: Flamingo,; First Edition edition (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0002258196
• ISBN-13: 978-0002258197
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (100 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,913,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

TIM O'BRIEN received the 1979 National Book Award in fiction for Going After Cacciato. His other works include the acclaimed novels The Things They Carried and July, July. In the Lake of the Woods received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was named the best novel of 1994 by Time. O'Brien lives in Austin, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Man We Love to Hate, October 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Tomcat in Love (Hardcover)

Tim O'Brien is, without a doubt, America's premier chronicler of the Vietnam War. Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried have become classics of that era and even In The Lake of the Woods deals largely with repercussions of the war's aftermath. Tomcat in Love, however, bears no resemblance to any of O'Brien's previous works and it is, amazingly, far more inventive, original and creative.

Tomcat in Love is the darkly comic story of Minnesota resident, Thomas Chippering, a pompous, middle-aged Professor of Linguistics who has deluded himself into thinking he's irresistible to women...all of them. As Chippering, himself, says, "My celebrated biweekly seminars...are almost always booked to the limit with attentive, worshipful, ardent young lollipops eager to widen their horizons." Not since Nabokov created Humbert Humbert, has there been a more thoroughly unlikable and self-deceiving central character or one whom we so much love to hate.

Chippering is definitely a man in love with words. "Words," he says, "have genuine substance, mass and weight and specific gravity." In fact, it is words and his knowledge of them, that places Chippering far above the ordinary man and woman. For, although Chippering flirts outrageously with every woman he meets, they all rebuff him, a problem Chippering falsely attributes to their far inferior linguistic skills. It's not that he's unattractive, he thinks, women have simply failed to appreciate him. The sad truth is, Chippering has been betrayed by the very words he loves so much. He does possess the skill to manipulate words, but at the cost of being able to feel even one honest emotion, about himself or others.

Betrayed by words and betrayed by his wife of twenty-plus years, Lorna Sue (she left him for a Tampa real estate tycoon), Thomas Chippering decides to seek revenge. Exactly what this revenge entails encompasses Lorna Sue's diabolical brother, Herbie, who, as a child, had attempted to crucify Lorna Sue...literally. Although he only managed to pound one nail through her hand, Chippering still believes Lorna Sue to be scarred for life, emotionally as well as physically, and he bitterly blames Herbie for the loss of his wife.

Chippering finally finds an ally in Mrs. Robert Kooshof (he cannot call her by her first name), the wife of an imprisoned veterinarian. Together they leave for Tampa where Chippering is hateful but hilarious as he concocts first one scheme then another in an effort to destroy Lorna Sue's marriage. Once again, though, Chippering falsely attributes his own sense of betrayal to a loss of linguistic skills rather than to his wife's abandonment. "The betrayal of love," he says, "...seems also to entail a fundamental betrayal of language and logic and human meaning." Even awash in a sea of betrayal, Chippering retains his pomposity.

Does Chippering ever exact revenge? Does he ever get his well-deserved comeuppance? Our desire to know is great enough to keep us reading to the book's totally twisted and demented end.

Tim O'Brien certainly took a risk with Tomcat in Love, but he also proved he could write satire of the highest order. The fact that he makes this hyperbolic story and its cast of unlikely characters as believable and true-to-life as his previous books is testimony to his talent as a writer. Even greater is O'Brien's ability to make us care about this self-deluding Lothario par excellence. For underneath the hilarity, the manipulation and the black comedy, O'Brien has wisely planted connections that reverberate in all of us: Words have power, but words lose their meaning when devoid of the emotion that makes us human. In the final analysis, Thomas Chippering is as tragic a man as anyone could imagine.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary book...you won't be the same after reading it., January 17, 2000

By 

Robert Wellen (CHICAGO, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tomcat in Love (Paperback)

I'm enormous fan of Tim O'Brien, but to be honest, I wasn't sure of what to make of this book when it came out in hardcover. Seemed wacky, I thought. Instead, I recently picked it in paperback, and just read. I was in store for an extraordinary journey.

You have never met anyone in literature like Tom Chippering. You can't help but pull for the guy. The story is engrossing, hilarious, and often quite moving. Love, revenge, memory, friendships, new beginnings, letting go, devastation. Even if you are not much interested in the English language, you will never look at it the same way again.

I don't want to say much more about the plot, but I will say that it is constantly riveting. At the end, I cried. I'm not sure why...perhaps, sadness or happiness or emotional exhaustion...perhaps, as Tom would say, I'll never know.

I do know you should order and read this book immediately. O'Brien only enhances his status as my favorite living american writer. There is no equal.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not normal Tim, but still great, December 19, 2002

By 

ChiefSanch (New Hartford, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomcat in Love (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book and Tim O'Brien's signature style. Once again, as with Northern Lights, it is disconnected from Vietnam, but it has ties. Tom Chippering is a veteran and their is a chapter dealing with it, holding true to Tim's faithfullnes to his past.

However, if there is anything Tim is great at writing it's the human psyche under any circumstance. Here, he beautifully portrays a pathetic, middle-aged sex addict who isn't very good at his antics of screw everything I can. He has charm, but is too hung up on his past to use it to its full potential. Instead, he is hellbent on seeking revenge upon his ex-wife, a disturbed in her own way, obsession of Chippering's. It has humor and drama, skepticism and redemption.

It isn't normal Tim O'Brien. If you've read The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato or If I Die In A Combat Zone and you really liked those for being about Vietnam, then this is not for you. But if you are a fan of literature in general and Tim O'Brien's beautiful language and, in my eyes, flawless style, then please, buy a copy of this and enjoy it. It is easily readable in a day or two because there is a subtle tension that sneaks up on you and grabs hold right at the end, so you're thankful you didn't put it down. This is a great novel. I give it my highest recommendation.