P.S. Your Cat is Dead

by James Kirkwood

Paperback, 1986

Status

Available

Call number

PS3561.I72 P15

Genres

Collections

Your library, University of Pittsburgh

Publication

Grand Central Publishing (1986), Mass Market Paperback, 224 pages

Description

"It's New Year's Eve in New York City. Your best friend died in September, you've been robbed twice, your girlfriend is leaving you, you've lost your job...and the only one left to talk to is the gay burglar you've got tied up in the kitchen...P.S. your cat is dead." "An instant classic upon its initial publication, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead received widespread critical acclaim and near-fanatical reader devotion. The stage version of the novel was equally successful and there are still more than two hundred new productions of it staged every year. Now, for the first time in a decade, James Kirkwood's much-loved black-humor comic novel of manners and excalating disaster returns to bewitch and beguile a new generation."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member CarolO

This book is warped. Only read if you enjoy dark, absurd, twisted humor. It may take years of analysis to understand why I enjoyed this book.

Not for the sensitive or easily offended readers.

5 more

LibraryThing member etznab

An absurd but completely engaging comedy. The storyline is so bizarre that I don't know how to write a review for it. Read the text on the cover ... if you find it intriguing, read the book. If the concept of a tying up a burglar and keeping him in your kitchen instead of calling the cops disturbs

you ... stay away.

Show Less

LibraryThing member gina-magini

Such a clever, ironic, and at times funny book. It seems things couldn't get worse when his apartment is broken into. Oh, but they can. And such a weird ending! Loved it.

LibraryThing member presto

Jimmy Zoole is a none too successful actor in his late thirties, never having really made it. Then his best friend dies, he is burgled twice in succession, his girlfriend is leaving him, he loses his job in a leading role on Broadway and he has to vacate his flat . . . and his cat is dead.

When on

New Year’s Eve he catches the burglar making a third attempt in his flat maybe things are about to change. After a struggle he has the burglar tied up and secured minus his trousers over the kitchen sink. What to do with him now? They talk, he learns his name, Vito, he is something of a loser, and he swings both ways.

A brilliant and bizarre story, two potential losers come together in extraordinary circumstances, maybe it marks a change for them both. It is beautifully written and very funny; the two appealing main characters are complete opposites yet manage to bond. They story becomes more absurd and equally more gripping by the minute; impossible to put the book down.

Show Less

LibraryThing member jwhenderson

A delightful treat, this humorous novel had me laughing out loud at times. Yet there is a dark side to the story for the situation is one of those that is only funny from the outside looking in. Abandoned by his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, and still unaware that his beloved cat Tennessee (named

after the playwright Tennessee Williams) has died in an animal clinic, hopeless New York actor Jimmy Zoole is feeling depressed and unstable when he happens across a cat burglar, Vito, in his apartment. Furious, he beats the stranger unconscious and ties him to his kitchen sink. Jimmy begins to torment his terrified captive; however, the unlikely pair soon establish a certain bond. Kirkwood adapted the novel, in a twist on the typical approach, from his play. I enjoyed both having seen the play performed locally in Chicago some years after reading the novel.

Show Less

LibraryThing member whitreidtan

When it rains it pours. But it has probably never poured on you quite as much as it is pouring on Jimmy Zoole in James Kirkwood's novel P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. Jimmy's best friend died completely unexpectedly a couple of months prior to the opening of the book. Then in the space of a few hours, he

loses the acting job he has lined up, his girlfriend dumps him for another guy, he gets another notice that he needs to move out of his rickety apartment building as it's being sold, he discovers a robber in his apartment for the third time in a few months, and, oh yeah, the vet called and his cat has died. If you think this couldn't get any more bizarre, you would be wrong. Jimmy beats the robber unconscious (well, the robber hits his head and gets knocked out while being beaten but basically the same thing) and ties him to the kitchen island sink. Once our thief Vito regains consciousness, he and Jimmy start to talk, covering things like the train wreck of Jimmy's life, his rich and possessive aunt, Jimmy's lost manuscript that Vito stole during the previous burglary, Vito's marriage and child and his affair with a well known actor Jimmy knew, Vito's tales of hustling, and more. It is the strangest New Year's Eve ever.

There isn't much action in the plot as it is dominated by Jimmy and Vito's discussions although there are a few interruptions to the talking and pot smoking pot when Jimmy's ex-girlfriend arrives with her new boyfriend to collect her things thinking Jimmy's out for the night and when the fellow actor Jimmy calls arrives with friends dressed up in all their campy glory primed for a very strange, BDSM kind of night indeed. These absurd interruptions to the main (non)action don't make the novel more appealing though. Jimmy swings from even tempered to angry to resigned in arcs that clearly belong on the stage. And the book as a whole feels more like a script than a novel. It desperately needs the dynamism of actors to bring it to life in a way that it doesn't show on the page. It is therefore not surprising to learn that this was adapted from the original script rather than written first. It comes across as a dated and rather tedious, long therapy session, which is saying something when much of the action takes place with a half naked man tied up and sprawled across a sink. The homoeroticism is clearly on display but I somehow missed the eccentric and funny bits that others apparently find in it. I kept expecting to see "Exit stage left" in the text and while that never appeared overtly, it was there in the action often. I have to believe that this lost a lot in the translation from stage to page but it just wasn't a very enjoyable reading experience.

Show Less

Fewer