Khush's Reviews > Cat Person

What is good about the story is that it has generated so much heat. This is great for the writer. Just on the strength of this story, she seems to have arrived on the literary scene.

I liked reading it. But there are also things that I did not follow. I could not help questioning certain aspects of this story.

It revolves around Margot who goes on date with a man far older than her. She gets disgusted and disconnects herself from him.

The guy seems to be a jerk. Someone who knows how to flirt and play with young girls. However, once in bed, he acts like a (failed? clumsy?) porn star, and not like a concerned lover. In other words, he fucks her, but fails to touch her. He licks her and inserts his fingers into her, but she is not moved by these probings at all. They are in the same bed, but mentally they are on different continents. One seek the other, while the other is fully stuck in body parts.

One understands Margot, and sees that she is sensitive, intelligent and very aware; and of course, this makes her suffer, but this also helps her to resolve the situation.

What I also liked about the story that she gets out of the trap quickly, and it is she who sensibly cuts
off contact with the guy. It would have been terrible had she chased him knowing well that she was unhappy him. This is perhaps central to the story; women find it hard to say 'no' even when they know that they must. It is actually Margot's friend who does it for her. She has her hesitations, her doubts, fear– the whole society, in fact, seems to speak through her and tries to regulate her, but she persists and finally succeeds. It is this that probably makes the story reverberates with so many.

Having known and understood her, I found certain things quite objectionable. She falls in love with the guy (with the idea of him, she ignores the signs that shows what the guy is like). On many occasions, she senses that something is wrong, but she goes all the way to try him out. The final decisive experiment is the (bad) sex. When the guy fails, only then she fails him. I wondered what would have happened had the sex been great, ecstatic. Would she then have moved away from him? Or would she, then, instead of dealing with his slights, have transformed them into benign things in her head?

There were moments early in the story when she feels drawn and charmed by him. But she also looks down at him, at his body. And this becomes urgent in bed, she cannot stop bashing him in her head for his paunch, his hair, his awkwardness. She imagines a future boyfriend who would understand her, and with whom she would insult the guy with a pouch, and then they would laugh and laugh, and share such joyful moments (getting joy, happiness by shaming someone's paunch!).

I would be embarrassed by my own behavior, by my own revulsion to someone's else body who, once, even fleetingly, evoked something-like-love in me. I would have questioned my own rumblings. Because his paunch did not appear on him that night. Her quest was humane, but she wanders in wrong alleys.

It is not a question of 'she' or 'he' when it comes to love. I think one should stop when a kiss does not feel right. I guess we know this instinctively except for Margot. She takes too long, but she finally comes home good.