Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Book Review: The Cat Tender

**SPOILERS**

by: Martin Drapkin

**I received a digital copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

I started out enjoying this book a lot. It made me laugh. It's all first person, from Maggie's perspective. And it's always her remembering her day or whatever crosses her mind in the evening while sitting in the tub with her cat and wine nearby. She talks to her cat, and her job is taking care of other peoples cats. Thus the title, The Cat Tender.

After awhile, though...the way he had Maggie always calling herself massive, fat, basically any name for chubby you can think of, that started to wear on me. I'm fat, I know it, but that doesn't mean it's on my mind 24-7, or that I use one of those descriptions for anything I might do. I don't think, "I'm going to shave my fat legs." I think, "time to shave my legs." I can understand her having low self-esteem, that is part of her personality, but everyone has limits. And quite frankly, size 16 isn't all that fat either. That's probably why it really started bugging me.

The other part that made this book drag is the lack of an arching plot. There's no resolution to anything. It's just the same at the beginning as it is at the end. Maggie doesn't stand up to her father, doesn't have that conversation with her mother. Hell, she doesn't even ask out the guy she thinks she might like. Then there's the silly lady jealousy that honestly isn't a real thing. Women aren't going to call some other woman a slut for talking to a guy they aren't even sure they want to be with anyway. I don't know, maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed pretty clear Maggie didn't want to date the guy, so why would she act jealous of him talking to someone?

I liked it to begin with and I did make it all the way through. I liked the character, I'll say that for this author. But he clearly doesn't understand women, especially not overweight women. It felt like a trip downhill from beginning to end. There was juts way too much time spent in Maggie's imagination that never amounted to anything. Let me just finish this by saying, women do NOT refer to themselves nor each other as broads...ever!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for your honesty! I agree with everything you have said!!!

    ReplyDelete

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