Kitten

'Strange, playful and intimate . . . I didn't want it to end' LUCY ROSE, author of The Lamb

'[A] brilliant study of need, want, loneliness, and power . . . soft and sharp, totally in control, utterly deranged. I lapped it up' KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE, author of Almost Life

'Hilarious and moving' JEAN KYOUNG FRAZIER, author of Pizza Girl

A magnetic novel about a young woman who falls in love with her boyfriend's cat.

Katie hasn't spoken to her mother in a year when her boyfriend James introduces her to his cat Silver. A small, vulnerable, incorrigible ball of need, Silver's acceptance of Katie cracks open something inside of her: an unravelling begins.

Fresh out of college and far from home, Katie is desperate to skirt the demands of adult life - especially because, as she promised her mother, the plan was to never grow up in the first place. Luckily, she has James: self-assured, generous, and seemingly happy to make decisions for them both.

When they go on holiday to James's family's seaside home, Katie's attachment to Silver grows. 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 misbehave spectacularly, be childish, be gross, and still get fed, seems to have the life Katie increasingly longs for. But as their bond intensifies, Katie's other relationships reach tipping points. Soon, Katie must come to terms with what she really wants, and what she might have to risk to get it.

Delicately playful and unexpectedly heartfelt, Kitten is a sensitive reckoning with the allure of helplessness and the uncertainty of becoming yourself in a world that is as disorienting as it is full of hope and connection.

A debut novel about mothers, class, love, and the dizzying task of becoming yourself