Kitten

A Novel

By: 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 her affection for Silver deepens, and the stakes of her relationships with those she loves intensify to the point of detonation, Katie is forced to confront the demands and desires of her life: the one she comes from, the one she longs for, and the one she already has.

Both darkly playful and unexpectedly heartfelt, this debut from a major new voice in fiction is a timeless reckoning with what it means to become a person in a world that is as disorienting as it is full of hope and promise.