"Cat Person" and Other Stories
"Cat Person" and Other Stories
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
*Includes the story “Cat Person”—now a major film*
A compulsively readable collection of short stories that explore the complex—and often darkly funny—connections between gender, sex, and power across genres.
“These stories are sharp and perverse, dark and bizarre, unrelenting and utterly bananas. I love them so, so much.” —Carmen Maria Machado, National Book Award Finalist and author of Her Body and Other Parties
“Kristen Roupenian isn’t just an uncannily great writer, she also knows things about the human psyche…The world has made a lot more sense since reading this book.” —Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author
Previously published as You Know You Want This, “Cat Person” and Other Stories brilliantly explores the ways in which women are horrifying as much as it captures the horrors that are done to them. Among its pages are a couple who becomes obsessed with their friend hearing them have sex, then seeing them have sex…until they can’t have sex without him; a ten-year-old whose birthday party takes a sinister turn when she wishes for “something mean”; a woman who finds a book of spells half hidden at the library and summons her heart’s desire: a nameless, naked man; and a self-proclaimed “biter” who dreams of sneaking up behind and sinking her teeth into a green-eyed, long-haired, pink-cheeked coworker.
Spanning a range of genres and topics—from the mundane to the murderous and supernatural—these are stories about sex and punishment, guilt and anger, the pleasure and terror of inflicting and experiencing pain. These stories fascinate and repel, revolt and arouse, scare and delight in equal measure. And, as a collection, they point a finger at you, daring you to feel uncomfortable—or worse, understood—as if to say, “You want this, right? You know you want this.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Roupenian's solid debut is highlighted by moments of startling insight into the hidden and often uncomfortable truths underneath modern relationships. "Cat Person," which caused a sensation when it was first published in the New Yorker in 2017, is an unrelentingly, almost painfully, honest and perfectly rendered dramatization of the millennial heterosexual relationship and all its attendant anxieties and violences. The other stories, about sex, power, and personhood, range from the highly conceptual in "Scarred," a woman magically summons what she thinks is her heart's desire, before she realizes the sacrifices one must make to truly attain it to the aggressively realistic in one of the best stories, "The Good Guy," readers are immersed into the train wreck thought process of Ted, who is certifiably and pathologically not like other guys, except, of course, that he is actually like so many guys. Another strong entry is "Death Wish," in which a divorced man living in a motel meets a girl on Tinder; when she shows up at his motel room, she has an unusual and upsetting sexual request for him. Though some stories don't land and rely too much on explication, there are some stellar moments of pithy clarity: In "Scarred," upon summoning a way to cheat desire, the protagonist muses, "I had everything that could be wanted. I invented new needs just to satisfy." This is a promising debut.