Cat Brushing: a dazzling short story collection about thirteen older women (Paperback)
  • Cat Brushing: a dazzling short story collection about thirteen older women (Paperback)
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Cat Brushing: a dazzling short story collection about thirteen older women (Paperback)

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£9.99
Paperback 288 Pages
Published: 22/06/2023
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE
'Sensual, spiky, tender and utterly original' Pandora Sykes
'A fierce and fascinating debut' Lily King

I was told of an older woman who was asked by her granddaughter, 'Granny, when was the happiest time of your life?'

'I don't know,' she replied, 'I may not have had it yet.'

The stories found in this collection explore the worlds of thirteen older women, reframing their intellectual and emotional lives in intimate vignettes that will shock and comfort in equal measure. In elegant prose Jane Campbell ignites the voices of women who are fighting to live on their own terms, energised by the stuff of human living: a need for companionship, attachments to love-objects, freedoms, integrity and sense of self. Cat Brushing confronts the tragic misconceptions of ageing showing older women to be nothing less than courageous, fearless and defiant in the face of overwhelming odds.

Publisher: Quercus Publishing
ISBN: 9781529421699
Number of pages: 288
Weight: 200 g
Dimensions: 198 x 128 x 24 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

Cat Brushing is a fierce and fascinating debut. I loved these women who have taken off their gloves to fight life with their bare hands. - Lily King, author of Writers & Lovers

I loved these fresh, wry, strange stories; by turns moving and unnerving, they disturb expectations of the longings, loves and ambitions of older women. - Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From and The Harpy

It's not every day . . . that you encounter a debut as fresh, assured and fun as Jane Campbell's . . . Though her stories are frequently explicit enough to bring colour to your cheeks, Campbell maintains a cool, commanding tone that enhances the effect of her limpid prose . . . The stories are varied in approach without being showy about it, and consistently draw novel insight from a few major themes: aging, sexuality, memory, loneliness. Her work merits comparison with that of Edna O'Brien or Muriel Spark, while an uncanny streak running through several of the pieces . . . might bring Daphne du Maurier to mind. - New York Times

I laughed out loud in joy and admiration so many times in this original, surprising book. Cat Brushing is about aging, about sex, about the weirdness of technology, and about womanhood - these stories felt both deeply familiar to me and far too absent from many of our culture's stories. Jane Campbell is a refreshing, compelling new voice. - Kate Reed Petty

Jane Campbell is a wonder! It's her clear-eyed vision, rendered in prose as crisp as bone china, that had me rapt. This book flings open a heretofore shuttered window, giving us an invigoratingly fresh and absolutely essential view of the psychology and emotions and appetites of aging women. Jane Campbell, where have you been? We've needed you for a very, very long time. - Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon

Jane Campbell's Cat Brushing is the debut of the decade, an eighty year old woman laying out the physical and spiritual struggle of life at its very end. I was haunted by these stories of older women falling, having strokes, dying--subjects often flattened into sentimentality--but in Campbell's hands made both elegant and transgressive. We are striving creatures of intense desire, Campbell insists, until we are not. - Darcey Steinke, author of Flash Count Diary

In thirteen revivifying stories, thirteen candid, empathic portraits of aging women for whom desire yet smolders, Campbell proves aging is a complex sport. Some mental agility is required, some wit and wisdom. Befuddlement and remorse are a part of play, too, but the stories offer the solace of shared experience and company. - Christine Schutt, Pure Hollywood and Other Stories

Stepping into these stories by Jane Campbell feels like opening a door back into the world. The thrust of life, of longing and regret, of contempt and forgiveness, it's all here in such vivid, delicious phrasing. She reads like Eudora Welty's wicked British cousin, a lot of fun. - John Freeman, Editor of The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story

Sensual, spiky, tender and utterly original short stories about the desire of women in their seventies and older. - Pandora Sykes

Cat Brushing offers a much-needed fresh perspective on the diverse realities of ageing. - Women's Own

An illuminating, funny and tender collection that affirms wisdom and experience as the basis for great storytelling - Sunday Business Post

Sensuous, strange and utterly original. - Sunday Independent Ireland (Book of the Year)

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“Eye-opening insight into the experiences of older women. (It’s Sapphic as well!!)”

Cat Brushing is the debut short story collection from Jane Campbell, published in the author’s eightieth year. Campbell presents vignettes of thirteen women as they reach seventy plus over thirteen stories. This book... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 10

“Highly recommended”

This is a great book by a new to me author. This is the first book I read by this excellent author and won't surely be the last as I love it.
In an age obsessed by youth this is a book about old women, women who... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 6

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