The Way to the Cats: A Novel [Paperback]

Yehoshua Kenaz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1998

IF ONE CAN IMAGINE Flannery O’Connor writing about a geriatric heroine with startling truths to tell, one begins to get a sense of Yehoshua Kenaz’s achievement in The Way To the Cats. Praised by Philip Roth, Amos Oz, and A.B. Yehoshua, and called "a throbbing hymn to life" by Publishers Weekly, this is the story of Yolanda Moscowitz, a sensitive seventy-six year old woman who suddenly finds herself living in a Tel Aviv home for the aged where she is surrounded by unreliable friends, seducers, betrayers, fake healers, shysters, and would-be lovers. Told with blunt realism and savage humor, it is a very human story of living in a world apart and of coping with the decay of the body and the mind while keeping a sanctuary for one’s soul. "A novelist must possess courage and artistry in generous measure to win readers in a story set in an old-age home, but that’s exactly what Yehoshua Kenaz has done," wrote Jonathan Kirsch in the Los Angeles Times. "So vivid is the figure of Mrs. Moscowitz, and so lyrical is Kenaz’s prose, that we are tempted to forget that she lives within a ravaged and failing body. But Kenaz refuses to allow us to forget.... The Way To the Cats is an engaging and accomplished novel of surprising tenderness and even a kind of grace."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

PW called Israeli novelist Kenaz's tale of a retired schoolteacher's struggle with old age in a Tel Aviv geriatric hospital "a throbbing hymn to life."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Mrs. Moscowitz is so heavy that her hip finally breaks, landing her in an Israeli rehabilitation hospital for the elderly. In this community of whining invalids, hers is just one of the voices raised in a chorus of constant complaint. "Everybody so ugly, half-dead, half-abnormal, all the time screaming day and night and smell of kaka everywhere," says Mr. Kagan, a painter she befriends. Mrs. Moscowitz agrees that life there is terrible, but when after a year she is released to her Tel Aviv apartment, she discovers the loneliness that awaits her and longs to return. Isolated in her apartment, she is preyed upon by fears of death and shady opportunists offering to take care of her for a price. This is a painfully grim book. Mrs. Moscowitz may embody the fate of the elderly in Israel, but American readers will quickly tire of her and this novel.
- Paul E. Hutchison, Bellefonte, Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 325 pages
• Publisher: Zoland Books (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883642485
• ISBN-13: 978-1883642488
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,075,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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