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Title: Waltzing the Cat

Author: Pam Houston

Narrator: Kristin Johansen

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-04-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Relationships and extreme adventures collide with deadpan humor and female wisdom in Pam Houston's transcendent follow-up to her bestselling Cowboys Are My Weakness. Through eleven interlinked stories, we follow roving photographer Lucy O'Rourke as she survives a home life where her parents engage in rather peculiar feeding rites for the family cat in a "title story that deserves to be anthologized into eternity" (The Washington Post Book World), a near-drowning on a white water rafting trip, and a grand cayman attack in the Amazon. All the while her search for love continues with a string of rugged, exciting, and usually, it seems, inappropriate men. While it's not always easy for Lucy to find success in either the great outdoors or love, she rolls with the punches, never losing her sassy wit. When a surprise encounter with Carlos Castaneda at an airport boarding gate sets off a series of synchronistic events that lead Lucy to Hope, Colorado, and the life she has been searching for, we know that "Houston's triumph is that she has come to know the quieter adventures of the heart" (Arizona Republic).

Members Reviews:

Solid collection

Houston's stories are really primo stuff--extreme characters, a journey through various levels of destructive and loving relationships--but so little attention is given to short story collections. More engaging and forgiving than any novel. Though we do follow one narrator throughout, these stories work well in their own right.

I've grown up.

I read Cowboys Are My Weakness in about 1994 or so, 20 years ago! I thought then that it was one of the most spot-on books I've read about relationships in that time and space -- young 20 or 30 somethings in the US West. And, I was one of those people. Time passed and life changed with marriage and children. I recently was looking at Cowboys Are My Weakness in my bookshelf and decided to look up Pam Houston on Amazon. I was surprised to learn that Pam Houston had published another book. I looked for a few years after reading her first and then stopped. So I am just now, in 2014, reading Waltzing the Cat. And, in all fairness, I am only half-way through. But, I am irritated with it, so am writing this review. First, though this book was just published 5 or so years after her first, forgive if my dates are off, the characters have not shown emotional growth. I still feel like the lead is often a female that does not always make great decisions. Maybe that is the point. What irritated me most, however, was the actual story, Waltzing the Cat. The facts in the story -- the urgency to cremate (that very day!) and the detailed description of the amount of ashes are WAY off. If you are going to write fiction about these topics, at least the facts should be accurate. Having just gone through the death of a parent, I can say quite assuredly that her facts are not correct and it just seems like if one is to write about such details, they should get the facts straight first.

Still my Favorite Pam Houston Tome.

I discovered this book over ten years ago and it rocked my world. Here was a woman who could pretty much do anything, whether or not she felt brave enough to do it. I wanted to be like her. And while I never have done most of the things or been most of the places Houston has been, I have been inspired by her stories again and again.