CLEO The Cat Who Mended a Family by Helen Brown

Cleo is not the book I wanted to read when I bought it. The book I wanted wasn’t available at the store I was in, and the cover of this one caught my eye. I am a cat person. (I’m a dog person, too, although I don’t have one at the present time.) I wasn’t sold by the cover; it looks like a children’s book. But it says it’s an international bestseller, and was hailed by Good Housekeeping as “the next Marley & Me,” which I did not read (I read The Art of Racing in the Rain, instead, and would give it five bookmarks). However, I did see the movie, Marley & Me, and liked it, although not as much as the true story of Hachi, which I think will stay with me the rest of my life. As I reached about the middle of this book, I decided the “international” in “bestseller” must have been New Zealand and Australia, where the author once lived / now lives. 


I hate saying that I didn’t like a book. I know the blood, sweat and tears that go into writing one, and it seems traitorous, therefore, I will only say I didn’t care much for the first half of this one. I think it’s a memoir, and the plot is very thin: a young family suffers a terrible loss, and then gets stuck with a kitten they are not in any emotional condition to adopt. From there, they must figure out how to keep going on with their lives. And of course, their loss is terrible, but I wasn’t drawn in by it. It’s the initiating hook of the story, so maybe there was too little time for me to be emotionally involved enough to share their pain. I wish the author had taken the time to make me care. I was left feeling like a casual observer, and in fact, I didn’t see that some of the characters themselves were all that devastated.

There is practically no conflict in this story at all, and that may be one reason I didn’t care about it. Everything fell easily into place for Helen. When a job offer came from the blue and required the family to uproot and move, no problem. When they had to leave their friends, no problem. At the new job, the protag liked everyone, and everyone liked her. Even the new job was a dream. When the couple divorced, no problem. Give their dog away? Leave Cleo behind for a year? No problem. And on and on the same way through the whole book. Obstacles to happiness keep cropping up, but are brushed aside as easily and automatically as shooing a fly. It would have been much more interesting had there been something she had to fight for or against. I needed a reason to root for her. The closest thing to an antagonist in the story was her mother, who only appears briefly in two scenes. At least she made me want to slap her.

The story does pick up midway through, after Helen meets Philip. At least he is an interesting character who eventually experiences some emotional conflict. I think had he not come along at that point, I would have just put the book down and read something else. However, by the end, when Helen wraps everything up, I had come to care enough about the characters to shed some tears and felt the author redeemed herself and the story. 3 bookmarks

For an explanation of my bookmark system, click on this link.
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Before posting this review, I read those on Amazon. They were all good 4 and 5 star reviews.

 

SARAH'S KEY by Tatiana de Rosnay

This book has a gorgeous cover.

Holocaust stories are always horrifying and heartbreaking, and Sarah’s Key by French author Tatiana De Rosnay is no exception.

Julia Jarmond is an American-born journalist married to a Frenchman, who lives in Paris. She has an eleven-year old daughter. She writes for a magazine geared toward other Americans living in France. The 60th anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ is coming up soon, and Julia’s assignment is to write about it. The Vel’ d’Hiv’ was the day in July of 1942 when French police rounded up Jewish families at dawn, including more than 4,000 children, and took them to an indoor stadium to be held until they were sent to Auschwitz. They were there for days with no food or water, and no bathrooms. 

Many died.  
They were the lucky ones. This book does not spare us the horrendous events or conditions the Jewish people suffered in the camps…and they were unspeakable nightmares.

Julia’s husband is renovating an apartment that had belonged to his grandparents, more specifically, his grandmere, when the story begins. When the apartment is completed, he and Julia, and their daughter, will move in. It is located on Rue de Saintonge, in the heart of the area where the Vel’d’Hiv’ roundup took place. Soon Julia becomes curious and begins researching who had lived in the apartment during that time.

Sarah Starzynski was ten-years-old on that fateful morning and her little brother was four. She adored him. She doted on him. They played together all the time, and had a secret hiding place. So when the French police came to get them that morning, Sarah locked her little brother in the secret place, promising to come back for him in a few hours. She had no idea what her future held.

This is a powerful story, masterfully told. It’s swift reading, too. I finished it in a few hours. And then I read the author’s acknowledgments, her interview, the historical perspective, the recommended reading list, the reading group questions, and finally, the back cover again, because I didn’t want it to end. 

5 Bookmarks (For an explanation of my bookmark system, click here.)

Pet Toss

My neighbor, Brandy Gull, moved out over the weekend. It was the last day of July, and I’m sure the need to be out by August 1st explains her big hurry. Four pickup trucks, one towing a flatbed trailer, all backed into her front yard at the same time on Saturday afternoon. She and her kids rushed back and forth, carrying out their belongings, which weren’t packed. The trailer was loaded with pots, soil, and other landscaping items from her job. I’m sure her big hurry explains why she forgot to take her pets with her.

I’m not sure about the woman. Sometimes she’s very nice; sometimes, she’s very defensive. One day, when I dropped the very heavy bowl of my birdbath while cleaning it, she came over and helped me pick it up. The next day, when I was looking for my cat, I asked if it might have gone into her house because a low, unscreened window a few feet from the last place I had seen her had been wide open at the time. The neighbor crossed her arms over her chest and responded as if I were accusing her of hiding my cat or something. Then of course, later, I learned the punk across the street had kidnapped it. But was it that unreasonable to ask if a cat had jumped through an open window? Sheesh.

The lady has a big family…four children whose various fathers often come and pick them up for the weekends, two dogs, at least two adult cats, maybe three, and three kittens. I know her children love those pets. Although I have nothing against the woman, we haven’t been on the friendliest terms during her year here. One of her dogs liked to run all over my yard, through a garden I had just planted. I love dogs, so I didn’t say much about it. But when the dog came in our yard and started barking at my ex, he said, “no way.” He wasn’t going to have a dog that wasn’t his stand in his yard and aggressively bark at him. I admit it made me a little leery that it might chase or attack my cats. That was before she acquired a few cats of her own; I couldn’t be sure. So when my ex talked to the lady about her dog, it put a damper on any friendship that might have blossomed.

The dog in question was skilled at climbing over the gate from her back yard, so her attempts to keep it confined was a problem, I know. She complained to me that the landlord wouldn’t “fix the gate,” which wasn’t broken. I knew he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t fix things that were broken. This is the same man who neglected two different, beautiful dogs when he lived there; someone I had never been so happy to see go. I hinted to my ex that maybe he could help with her gate. I guess he didn’t want to. The lady took to keeping the dogs inside, and sending her teenage son with them when they needed to go out.

Saturday evening, about 6:30, I noticed two of her kittens on my porch. I headed over to her house to see if she was completely gone, or only partially gone. As I made my way over, I saw that the blinds in a window that faces my house had been shredded, a new condition. I looked in. Imagine my surprise when that dog looked back. The poor thing was so happy to see someone that she didn’t even bark at me. It was obvious she was terrified that she had been left behind, and was trying to get out. My heart broke for her. I told her I was sure they were coming back for her, and I waited until midnight, August 1st, which I figured was her deadline to move, and then called the police. They came and told me wait until Monday, then call the shelter.

I was gone all day Sunday. I made a special trip back home in the middle of the day to see if the lady had come for her animals. I couldn’t rouse the dog by knocking on the glass or ringing the doorbell, so I assumed she did, and was glad of that much. But the kittens remained on my porch, and the third one joined them.

I only knew of one place I might reach the woman. Her daughter had once told me about a family business they all help out in on the weekends. So I called and spoke to a young-voiced woman who claimed to be the manager, and told her my dilemma. Did the woman want her cats, or did she want me to take them to the shelter? About two minutes later, the neighbor called me and said if I ever called her at work again, she would sue me. So I called the shelter. I don’t understand how people can have pets that they love and fight for, then abandon them when they become inconvenient. She may as well have thrown those kittens on the trash pile she left by the curb.

How can anyone keep an animal for any length of time and not know that the animal experiences emotion just like we do? That they love us even at our worst. That they are dependent on us for their lives, and in every lick of our hands, and every purr in our arms, they show their gratitude. How can anyone look into the eyes of a pet and say, “Sorry, buddy, you’re not going?”


10/14/10 I've been meaning to add this post script for quite a while, but have been too busy and distracted lately. Very shortly after this happened, a nearly 20-year-old jade plant I had sitting on my front porch suddenly collapsed and died -- a lot like it had been poisoned. It made me a little suspicious.