Kitten by Stacey Yu [Book Review]

A recent grad falls for her boyfriend’s cat and makes a surprisingly decent case for feline retirement. Kitten is funny and sharp on class and dependency, but I might have been the wrong age for this debut novel.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

There is a very specific point in life when lying around all day, being fed, causing problems, and remaining universally adored starts to sound less like “being a cat” and more like a legitimate career plan.

Stacey Yu’s debut novel, Kitten, understands the appeal.

Katie has recently graduated from college and is now living in New York City, theoretically entering adulthood but mostly trying to avoid it. Her work-study job just ran out. Her roommate abruptly moves out. She isn’t speaking to her mother. And her wealthy boyfriend, James, is more than happy to make decisions for both of them.

Then Katie meets Silver, James’s childhood cat.

Silver doesn’t have a résumé. Silver doesn’t have to make awkward conversation at dinner parties. And Silver can be needy and demanding, and no one cares.

The Dream of Being Taken Care Of

Katie quickly becomes obsessed with Silver, and the comparison Yu draws between the two is both funny and increasingly uncomfortable.

At first, there’s something almost charming about Katie looking at this pampered cat and thinking, essentially, Wait. Why am I doing all this?

But Kitten gets more interesting when that joke stops being a joke.

Katie already lets James take care of her in ways that make her life easier. He has money. He has confidence. And he seems to know where they’re going and how they’re getting there, which is extremely convenient when Katie barely knows what she wants for dinner.

James is generous and self-assured, the kind of person who can make a seaside vacation and an entire future happen before Katie has decided whether she wants either.

Katie Was Where I Struggled

I liked Yu’s writing, and I liked the central idea of using Katie’s attachment to Silver to explore dependence, adulthood, and the desire to stop trying quite so hard.

But I never really connected with Katie.

Some of that may simply be where I am in life. I suspect I would have found her much more compelling if I were in college, recently out of it, or staring directly into that terrifying abyss known as “So what are you doing with your life?”

From where I’m standing now, Katie often felt whiny and listless. I kept wanting her to get angry, apply for another job, pick a direction, and go.

Then again, that may be exactly the point. Katie is stuck because being stuck still feels safer than choosing wrong. She has people willing to cushion the fall, and the more comfortable that cushion becomes, the harder it is to imagine standing on her own.

I understood that intellectually. Emotionally, I still wanted to shake her a little.

Love, Money, and Unequal Ground

Much more is happening in Kitten than a strange little love story between a woman and her boyfriend’s cat.

Katie and James’s relationship raises uncomfortable questions about class and intimacy. How equal can a relationship feel when one person has enough money to make most practical problems disappear?

Yu doesn’t turn James into a cartoon villain, which makes the dynamic much more effective. Katie’s attraction to his stability makes sense. Plenty of people would find it appealing.

The Mother Wound Underneath It All

Katie’s estrangement from her mother adds a whole different layer to the story. She has inherited a version of love where devotion and pain are attached. Her history with her mother shapes the way she understands closeness, dependence, and love.

That part of the novel worked for me more than some of Katie’s day-to-day drifting.

Beneath all the oddness involving Silver, this is a book about how we learn to become adults when the models we were given for love weren’t particularly healthy. How much do we repeat, and how much can we reject?

So, Would I Recommend Kitten?

Depends who’s reading it.

I liked Stacey Yu’s writing, and I think the premise is smart, strange, and more emotionally complicated than it first appears. The questions about dependence, class, adulthood, and inherited ideas of love stayed with me.

Katie herself did not.

This book will hit harder for readers closer to her stage of life, especially anyone currently navigating the gap between college and whatever adulthood is supposed to look like. To that reader, yes. To someone my age, decide for yourself.

The cat has figured out the system, though. On that, we can all agree.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced reader’s copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.