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“When the couple taunts him — ‘Look at what you’ve done’— I was shaken out of my numb disdain into a kind of anger. No, it’s what the author has done, and why?”

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New York Times Books

@nytimesbooks

Jan 8, 2019

"I wanted better for these characters — lives with real emotional stakes, actual personalities and not just kinks." @parul_sehgal reviews the first book by Kristen Roupenian, author of "Cat Person." nyti.ms/2FjWiNS

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If “Cat Person” is the best a writer can do that writer is not very good.

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I read her follow up work and it felt very ...... unremarkable. But there's a group of people that just seem to eat it up

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My experience reading Cat Person was, “I don’t know about this...actually, pretty good.” Maybe pernicious, though? This

@the_point_mag

article says it better than I can: thepointmag.com/2018/criticism

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My #1 issue with “Cat Person” was the ending. If the part where he calls her a whore were omitted, you’d have about a hundred more layers of emotional complexity / moral ambiguity.

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The writer had to include him calling Margot a whore to justify Margot’s behavior, but what if she hadn’t? How would that have made us all feel at the end? What if he was just a dopey guy who sucked @ sex and we/Margot never got the *official confirmation* that he’s the villain?

5:48 AM · Jan 11, 2019Twitter for iPhone

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FYI- didn’t read that criticism you linked yet, but I will.

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No worries! Just says a lot of what you’re getting at, I think. Parul Sehgal’s piece, too; the characters are there to make their point, or whatever, but don’t signify much beyond that. (I’ve only read Cat Person; retweeted b/c I thought it was as good as a “bad” review gets.)

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