Stacey Yu

A magnetic, stirring debut novel about an adrift young woman whose growing fascination with her boyfriend’s cat ushers her into the possibilities of her own life—but not without first threatening to unravel it. Katie is far from home and fresh out of college, desperate to skirt adulthood’s demands, and all too willing to let her wealthy boyfriend James make decisions for them both. It doesn’t help that she’s no longer speaking to her mother, who resents her for leaving Little Rock. Or that her roommate has abruptly moved out of their New York City apartment. But when James takes Katie on vacation to his family’s seaside house, he brings Silver, his childhood cat, and Katie discovers a sudden, strange, and giddy sense of connection. Silver doesn’t mind that Katie can’t seem to get a job, hold her own at dinner parties, or make amends with her mother. Silver, who gets to lie around all day, misbehave spectacularly, be cute, gross, and still get fed, seems to have the life Katie increasingly longs for. Soon enough, they’re inseparable, and something inside Katie begins to crack open, or maybe just…crack. Because if Katie has learned anything from her estranged mother, it’s that devotion comes at a price. As Katie's affection for Silver deepens, all of her other relationships begin to falter. Soon, Katie must confront what it is she desires from her life, and what she might have to risk to get it. Both darkly playful and unexpectedly heartfelt, this debut from a major new voice in fiction is a timeless reckoning with the uncertainty of becoming a person in a world that is as disorienting as it is full of hope and promise.

A Novel

Kitten

My mother wasn’t human, she was my mother. 

Nate

I can’t think of anything that would require more self-control than killing yourself.

I took something from my mother by being born, both her youth and her future, and every day it became harder to give it back.

It was impossible, I knew, to make a person believe something they did not already want to.

“When you don’t tell me something like that, it’s a choice,” James said. “And if you still stand by a choice like that, then I don’t think we’re in a relationship.”

Maybe growing up didn’t mean gaining more control but rather learning to exercise the little you already had.

You could not protect them from their life.

Kitten quotes

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