Amelia Morris

Wildcat is an uproariously funny, surprisingly touching story of one woman’s journey through motherhood and female friendship, in a society that plays fast and loose with information.

New mother, aspiring writer, and former shopgirl Leanne has lost her way. As she struggles with both her grief and the haze of motherhood, it also becomes clear that her best friend, the default queen of East Side Los Angeles, Regina Mark, might not actually be a friend at all.

As Leanne begins to investigate and undermine Regina, she also strikes up an unexpected friendship with the lauded writer Maxine Hunter. Feeling frustrated and invisible next to Regina’s wealth and social standing, Leanne seeks security wherever she can find it, whether that’s by researching whether she should vaccinate her son, in listening to the messages she thinks her father is sending from beyond the grave, or in holding her own against a petulant student in her creative writing class. Most of all, however, she looks for it within Maxine, who offers Leanne something new.

With a keen eye for the trappings of privilege, class, and the performative nature of contemporary domestic life, Amelia Morris’s tender and wicked debut shows us a woman who bucks against the narrative she’s been fed, only to find power in herself and the truth that emerges.

Wildcat

Amelia

But then, Leanne hadn't foreseen Regina's stickiness-the way Regina always had an event that she presumed Leanne would at- tend. Neither had she foreseen her own desire to adhere. She didn't yet understand the ways she was willing to make herself small so that a female figure might love her. And so the friendship had sur- vived through the years. Then, eventually, it grew. Which is all to say that Leanne hadn't realized she was setting a precedent when they were twenty-four the median age of Bachelor contestants, when her youth felt unquestioned and everlasting- and Regina mentioned "her" Realor. They'd just finished a yoga class. Leanne was walking toward her used Toyota Corolla and Re- gina to her newly leased Prius. Leanne considered her friend in that moment. She saw so clearly a young woman playing grown-up. A little girl talking about meeting with her Realtor. She wanted to ask her, laughing: How can you afford a house? I can hardly afford these yoga classes! But instead, she said, "Exciting!" and got into her car.

She felt the accrued tension in between her shoulder blades while she stared at her baby's slightly agape mouth; his body looked the opposite of hers in every way. So open, so trusting. She touched his cheek with the back of her finger and promised to do better for him. She promised not to let him turn out like her. "No," she whispered. When you grow up, you won't even like overpriced mid-century modern furniture.

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