February 19, 2024
The Storytelling Cat – or, OK, I Lied
Last December I said I’d likely never write another novel. And what did I start doing before a month had passed? Writing another novel. Never say never and all that. The story of how this novel, The Storytelling Cat, came to be would make for an interesting essay on creativity and art in itself.
Later in this post I’ll explain more about the creation process, together with info on how to get the novel – a free download is of course available – but for now there’s something intriguing you should know: This book is unlike any other I’ve written; there’s a lot of peculiarity involved.
That the protagonist is a cat with human knowledge is the least odd thing about this book.
The Storytelling Cat: Basic Info
Let’s start with the practicalities, which in this context boils down to “genre” (you’ll soon see this isn’t very easy) and a blurb.
Though we could sort of describe this book as “accessible literary fiction“, “magical realism”, or “psychological”, the truth is that it doesn’t fit any of these or any other genre. The Storytelling Cat is a work meant to please one and only one person: its own creator (or rather, mediator). As a result, it doesn’t adapt to any audience expectations and, indeed, its intended audience is extremely narrow.
Basically, if you’ve liked the ambiguous, poetic nature of my shorter fiction and would like to see some sort of bridge between it and novels like The Perfect Gray, you’ll like this.
Overall, the more of my work you’ve read and liked, the more you’ll like this, because it contains plenty of intertextual/metatextual connections to my work at large – including the theme of storytelling. Storytelling cat, duh…
Obviously, you’ll also love it if you’re a cat person. Here’s the blurb that shows you why:
It was a sunny May morning when I realized I was a cat – one who could think like a human. I had no other memory, no knowledge of who I was. Had I been a human reincarnated as a cat, or a cat possessed by a human? I knew I couldn’t afford to waste my time on such trivialities; I had someplace to be. I had to cross the world, even if it was the last thing I’d do.
In the still cold Nordic Europe, a tuxedo cat catches a glimpse of himself in a window and it changes everything: He realizes he possesses human knowledge – of history, geography, languages. Though he has no memory of the past, he feels a vague but pressing need to leave immediately for Greece, where he feels there’s someone waiting for him. But the dreams and visions accompanying his journey seem to reflect a deeper, darker reality.
The Storytelling Cat and Storytelling: On Creation
For quite some time, I’ve been wanting to write the third part of what I’ve termed “my Greek trilogy”, the first two books of which are Apognosis and The Other Side of Dreams. To be clear, all these books can be read independently of one another; they are not a series. However, they do share motifs, settings (Greece being a major focus), and even characters.
Moreover, The Storytelling Cat also features another element – and this is a very minor, insignificant spoiler (revealed in the first ten pages): The place the feline protagonist tries to reach is Lemnos. I’ve been wanting to focus on Lemnos in the last part of this trilogy for years, but I couldn’t think of how, for an array of reasons. The most important ones had to do with conveying atmosphere and language.
That’s where a cat protagonist becomes a very useful literary device. The protagonist, Tux, navigates issues of language, setting, and even reality in a way that isn’t possible in fully realist fictions.
The short novel (at about 61,000 words) is fairly simple on the surface and very easy to follow. The first part of it, in particular, almost reads like young-adult fiction in its linearity. But as usual when it comes to my fiction, there is a more complex reality underneath the deceptively simple surface. And this is where magical realism offers the opportunity that made me “lie” when I said I wouldn’t write another novel!
Writing Samples and Free Download
Here are three random samples from the novel. Below, you can also find the link for a free download.
The gray cat’s eyes were fixed on me for a moment, as if she was assessing me. She walked around me, sniffed me a bit, and then, ignoring my question, she posed her own – which was, oddly enough, also mine, asked every single moment since what I’d come to think of as my awakening.
“What are you, exactly?”
“I’m a cat you dummy, like you.”
“Well…” she hesitated, returning to her earlier spot, opposite me. The dim light of the streetlamp made her look less gray and more cream, somehow. “You are, yes. And yet there’s something off about you, some oddity I can’t quite explain.”
It’s the young man I met on the ferry! I recognize his imposing beard – he looks a bit different, but as it often happens in dreams, it’s a beard that tells the truth about the identity of the person, right Herr Freud?
“You will be fine, trust me. But stay with me and don’t remove your life jacket, alright? Alright? Don’t remove your life jacket!”
So is this a boat? Are the clouds supposed to be waves? Dreaming is hard work…
Now I’m in the most beautiful summer afternoon you can conjure up – no; not even that will do. It’s even better! It’s only I who can dream it into existence; like telling a story, isn’t that right? And so take my word for it: I’m lying on the beach, feeling the rough heat of the grains of sand between my paws, tickling my whiskers, as I drink orange juice through a straw. Can cats drink orange juice? I can’t think about that right now, I’m becoming lucid and I must make sure the ending of the dream is right, before I wake up. So back to the sand, and the sea before me, and the afternoon sun of Greece, and the tamarisks above me, and look, there’s a crow soaring over the water, a deviant yet misunderstood plotter, and how on earth are crows flying over the sea, and the ice-cream the kid now let go, and our tears forming life’s undertow, and mommy, why does everyone have to die, I don’t know darling, stop asking stupid questions, alright, fuck you too, I’ll go kill my father now.
I lie by Grandpa’s table, every now and then absentmindedly flicking my tail, more by boredom rather than needing to shoo a fly, the way an irked child nervously spurs his heels against a chair. As pointlessly, as lulled by the pleasant warmth of mild boredom, my claws discreetly scratch the legs of Grandpa’s chair, following the irregularities of the wood and the artificial imperfection of the paint that has seeped through the cracks, covering gaps and shielding their secrets from the world, forever.
I look up at the serene blue sky – it’s clear, except for a few thin cirrus clouds and a couple of fading contrails by planes overpassing Lemnos. The sun is low, it’s rapidly approaching the hills, painting orgasmic pink puffs on clouds and leaving beautiful orange wounds on whitewashed walls.
We’re approaching a threshold, I feel.
Have I been here before? Have I had this exact same thought, in this exact same square?
You can download The Storytelling Cat here:
Most of my novels are available as an immediate free download – simply visit the Fiction page on the main site. And remember, you can also just email me and ask for a free, no-strings-attached (e.g. review etc.) digital copy of any of my books.
However, if you want to support my work you can also choose to get it on Amazon.
I am impressed. Mircea Cărtărescu’s Nostalgia is also a non-novel in which each chapter can be read as a short story, but they all share themes and locations (and the overall timeframe). It remains one of my favourite books to date. The freedom of each chapter, yet the contained-ness of the novel format. Magnificent strategy.
This rings a bell, I believe we might have mentioned it before. Another similar book I’ve read is Territory of Light, by Yūko Tsushima, where each chapter, though certainly connected to the overall story, is perfectly readable without any recourse to the rest of the novel.