Waltzing the Cat [Paperback]

Pam Houston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999

Relationships and extreme adventures collide with deadpan humor and female wisdom in Pam Houston's transcendent follow-up to her bestselling Cowboys Are My Weakness. Through eleven interlinked stories, we follow roving photographer Lucy O'Rourke as she survives a home life where her parents engage in rather peculiar feeding rites for the family cat in a "title story that deserves to be anthologized into eternity" (The Washington Post Book World), a near-drowning on a white water rafting trip, and a grand cayman attack in the Amazon. All the while her search for love continues with a string of rugged, exciting, and usually, it seems, inappropriate men. While it's not always easy for Lucy to find success in either the great outdoors or love, she rolls with the punches, never losing her sassy wit. When a surprise encounter with Carlos Castaneda at an airport boarding gate sets off a series of synchronistic events that lead Lucy to Hope, Colorado, and the life she has been searching for, we know that "Houston's triumph is that she has come to know the quieter adventures of the heart" (Arizona Republic).

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Lucy O'Rourke 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, 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, 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."

A less graceful, less wry writer would not be able to map Lucy's self-conscious journey of discovery with such ease and agility. Houston's adventurer is the sort of woman who runs into Carlos Castaneda after she's 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, she's 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 she's 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The winningly forthright narrator of Houston's second collection of interlinked stories (after Cowboys Are My Weakness) is peripatetic landscape photographer Lucy O'Rourke, 33, who persists in falling in love with a succession of men who are wrong for her and in risking grievous bodily harm in adventure sports. Lucy is tossed into raging rapids on the Colorado River in Utah, faces down a grand cayman that almost capsizes her canoe in Ecuador, nearly drowns twice in the waters off the Bahamas in hurricane season and repeatedly tests her courage in other exotic locations. Each change of scene is a search for a home and a man with whom to establish it; each time, she is disappointed anew by neurotic lovers who are afraid of commitment. The unconscious motivation of all her adventures is the little girl she once was, caught between an alcoholic mother and a mean, bullying father. The 13 vignettes from her life, repetitive as they seem initially, move Lucy along a path on which she becomes open to mystical visions: the first is a visitation from Carlos Castaneda, which leads her to settle down at the dilapidated ranch her grandmother has bequeathed to her in the Colorado Rockies. Lucy's troubles are not over at the end of this suspenseful and plaintively appealing book, and her future is not entirely clear, yet the reader finally feels that she has learned valuable lessons that may take her to safe harbor. Houston describes Lucy's sporting adventures with cinematic detail, conveying both her technical prowess and the exhilaration of physical daring. On the other hand, readers may become exasperated at the number of selfish, foolish, posturing men who wander into Lucy's path. Her slow progress toward insight and peace of mind is wrapped up in a mystical epilogue that is rather contrived, but she is such an engaging heroine that one is left wanting to read further chapters in her life. Author tour. Editor, Carol Houk Smith.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press; 1ST edition (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671026372
• ISBN-13: 978-0671026370
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #439,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a book I wish I had written, November 3, 1999

By 

Juniper P. "Juniper" (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waltzing the Cat (Paperback)

Pam Houston writes in that imperfect way that achieves near perfection. You know an author is getting to you when the words make you stop and read them again, tasting and feeling them to make sure they are real.

Her passage explaining why she stays with a jealous, abusive man rang almost too close to home....after giving her litany of painful reasons, she explains that you should understand where she is coming from... "unless you are lucky, and then you will not." Reading Pam makes me feel as though an old friend is sitting in my bedroom talking to ME, and I realized reading this passage, that I did, unfortunately, understand. Thanks for writing from the heart, and I can't wait to read more!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars And Then You Wake Up and Have Breakfast, January 18, 2001

By 

Molly M. Wolf (Havertown PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waltzing the Cat (Paperback)

"Waltzing the Cat" is a good book, although it is not the best that Pam Houston has to offer. The traditional Pam Houston elements are present in this novel, however I agree with the reviewer who said it was "disjointed." It felt to me as if each chapter was screaming out to be a short story. There was very little flow through the novel to tie it up into a neat little literary package.

I am a fan of this author through and through, don't get me wrong. I enjoy her writing tremendously, admire the way she spins a story, and the highly autobiographical nature of her work appeals to me a great deal. I am not maligning this book; merely saying it didn't meet my expectations, although they were probably set impossibly high.

The title of this review is the title of the chapter that spoke to me in the clearest voice. If you do nothing more than pick up "Waltzing the Cat" and read that chapter, your life will be enriched.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Woven Stories, May 29, 2001

By 

Lori Fox-Rigney (Vacaville, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waltzing the Cat (Paperback)

Pam Houston once again has spun a web of collected stories encircling the life of of our heroine; this time, it's Lucy, photographer, hunter of the perfect emotionally available man, realistic woman-with-issues that we can all identify with. Filled with rich metaphors and descriptive detail, this collection of related stories is fun to read and leaves the reader emotionally satisfied when he or she comes full circle by the end of the book. I highly recommend this book as great summer reading! Enjoy.