Review
With any memoir one must ask how far an author's experiences of life are coloured by the opinion of others or, more misleadingly, by their own subconscious desire to launder that life. 'I try to make myself look good,' Piercy confesses in her opening pages. Well, who doesn't? Piercy might be forgiven for such a human failing. Rather, this exploration of her emotional life, as opposed to its literary or political aspects, strives at times to be so meaningfully honest it teeters on the sententious. Piercy divides her story into sections, each rounded off by one of her own poems, and unified analogically and literally with cats. Her life, as she puts it, 'has a spine of cats' and she describes herself as 'a stray cat who has finally found a good home'. From poor beginnings in Detroit to the comfort of Cape Cod, Marge's moggies are not material for mirth. (At one stage she truly believes they are reading her manuscript at night.) Once she gets on to dealing with her adulthood, however, the enterprise starts to gain astringency and some of the insight that has won her acclaim as a novelist, poet and feminist. Now in her 65th year, Marge Piercy clearly felt compelled to write this memoir. What is less clear is why. In her own words, she is not an easy person to like. Is it possible she believed her cats could be used as the old chestnut of an animal making a difficult character more sympathetic? Whatever, here is the account of a woman who takes herself, and her cats, very seriously indeed. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
Sleeping with Cats is the intimate memoir of acclaimed author and poet Marge Piercy whose bestselling novels include Woman on the Edge of Time, Body of Glass and Braided Lives. Focusing on her emotional life, rather than her literary or political adventures, here she reveals the life behind her poems and novels and the origins of her remarkable literary career. Piercy includes several of her memorable poems and revisits the people, the circumstances, and the actions which inspired her to write them, laying bare the origins of both her fiction and poetry. Throughout her life are her cats, steadfast companions who remain while the people in her life come and go. Always honest and thoroughly compelling, Sleeping with Cats is a fascinating account of this extraordinary and complex woman's life.
