Kitten: A Novel
An enchanting debut novel about a young woman whose growing obsession with her boyfriend’s cat opens new possibilities for her life—but not without threatening to unravel it.
“Abound in wit and restraint, Kitten explores the funny yet unsettling complexities of modern love. . . . A fearless debut!” —Weike Wang, author of Chemistry
“Yu’s novel is both a kind of Gen Z parable of existential nihilism and a psychologically deft portrait of mother-daughter trauma. . . this spiky debut refuses to be boxed in”—Kirkus Reviews
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • A HARPER’S BAZAAR MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK
Katie is far from home, fresh out of college, and desperate to skirt the demands of adult life. It doesn’t help that she’s no longer speaking to her mother. Or that she owes her roommate and closest friend months of rent money. Luckily, her self-assured, generous boyfriend James seems happy to make decisions for them both. When James takes Katie on vacation to his family’s seaside house, he brings Silver, his childhood cat, and Katie discovers a sudden, strange, and giddy connection.
Silver doesn’t mind that Katie can’t seem to get a job, hold her own at dinner parties, or make amends with her mother. Silver, who gets to lie around all day, misbehave spectacularly, act cute, be gross, and still get fed, seems to have the life Katie increasingly longs for. Soon enough, they’re inseparable, and something inside Katie begins to crack open . . . or maybe just crack.
Because if Katie has learned anything from her mother, it’s that devotion comes at a price. As Katie's affection for Silver deepens, her other relationships begin to falter, until she’s forced to confront what she really desires from life—and what she might have to risk to get it.
Darkly playful, wryly observant, and unexpectedly heartfelt, this debut from an irresistible new voice in fiction is a timeless reckoning with the uncertainty of becoming a person in an age that is as disorienting and lonely as it is full of hope and promise.
BUY THE BOOK
Join a book club that is reading Kitten: A Novel!
Community Reviews
Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the chance to read and review Kitten by Stacey Yu.
I first heard about Kitten from the author's own Substack post and I was intrigued with the idea of the book at the time. It also helps that the cover is beautiful.
Katie and her boyfriend James go down to his family house near the beach. Katie falls head over heels for James's cat, Silver, who was James's childhood wish; he wanted a pet. James is older, responsible and loves with the sort of gentleness that rarely exists. This is not just extended to Katie and Silver, but to his mother, childhood friend Isabella, and anyone in his life. Katie on the other hand is adrift; she hasn't spoken to her mother in a year, her last job hasn't paid her, she has no idea what she's doing in her life. She's so guilt stricken over leaving her mother behind that she can't seem to shift her energy towards living some, any, part of her own life.
But she falls in love with Silver, the cat who can swim in the sea just as she's learning. She even makes James leave Silver behind after he needs to go back to work early. Partially an accident and partially her carelessness result in Silver's death. Probably the catalyst for her learning that she needs to grow up.
“You think nobody in your life cares about you, because it allows you to act like a little monster.”
A large theme in this book is Katie's passivity; whether that's with James, her roommate, Silver; she allows things to pull her, and uses that to justify her own self infantilization and also resent it. She also seems incredibly depressed, but refuses to allow herself to accept support from people around her; to accept love from people around her. Lou is her best friend, and the reader can see that, but Katie repeatedly allows Lou to just be her roommate. To accept the love that Lou and James have for her is to also accept the responsibility of caring for that love. She hasn't called her mother; when she finally does after a year her mother doesn't pick up the first time, but she does a few weeks later. Two calls solved a great deal, but so did this growing sense in Katie that she needs to take charge of her own life instead of being passive. That maybe it's okay to want to escape adulting, but the process of becoming an adult doesn't ever halt.
I say this and I also wonder what James and Lou ever see in Katie; maybe she's just an unreliable narrator who doesn't show us her actions that keep them around. And I also wonder if the book does such a good job at making us feel Katie's passivity that it makes the reader passive as well; dulls down our own emotional response to Katie. That being said, something about it still has me typing out this review and some of it still has me saying what was the point of that.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.