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Résumé
Résumé
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"The most brilliant feline portrait in literary history." - People Magazine (Book of the Week)
The #1 bestselling author of The Alienist tells the extraordinary story of Masha, a half-wild rescue cat who fought off a bear, tackled Caleb like a linebacker--and bonded with him as tightly as any cat and human possibly can.
"Dares us to take a journey into love and pain . . . My Beloved Monster is a love story and a requiem." - Wall Street Journal
"Excellent...Worth the emotional investment, and the tissues you will need by the end, to spend time with a writer and cat duo as extraordinary as Masha and Carr." -- Washington Post Book World
Caleb Carr has had special relationships with cats since he was a young boy in a turbulent household, famously peopled by the founding members of the Beat Generation, where his steadiest companions were the adopted cats that lived with him both in the city and the country. As an adult, he has had many close feline companions, with relationships that have outlasted most of his human ones. But only after building a three-story home in rural, upstate New York did he enter into the most extraordinary of all of his cat pairings: Masha, a Siberian Forest cat who had been abandoned as a kitten, and was languishing in a shelter when Caleb met her. She had hissed and fought off all previous carers and potential adopters, but somehow, she chose Caleb as her savior.For the seventeen years that followed, Caleb and Masha were inseparable. Masha ruled the house and the extensive, dangerous surrounding fields and forests. When she was hurt, only Caleb could help her. When he suffered long-standing physical ailments, Masha knew what to do. Caleb's life-long study of the literature of cat behavior, and his years of experience with previous cats, helped him decode much of Masha's inner life. But their bond went far beyond academic studies and experience. The story of Caleb and Masha is an inspiring and life-affirming relationship for readers of all backgrounds and interests--a love story like no other.
Critiques (4)
Critique du Publishers Weekly
Novelist Carr (the Kreizler series) delivers a lively and moving memoir about his 17-year companionship with a Siberian forest cat named Masha. Carr first met Masha while visiting a shelter in Vermont. The semi-feral cat was rescued from abandonment in an empty apartment and had developed a reputation among the staff for extreme skittishness. When an employee noticed Masha cozying up to Carr, the attendant implored him to adopt her, and he promptly brought her along to his new home in Upstate New York. Masha quickly took on the dominant role--she hated loud music, so Caleb edited his listening habits to satisfy her--and over the pair's life together, Carr came into his own as a caretaker and a companion. He nursed Masha back to health after attacks from a bear and a pack of dogs, turned a blind eye when she stole visitors' socks, and tended to her arthritis as his own health started to falter and he underwent surgery for peritonitis. Carr alternates the chronicle of his and Masha's relationship with details about his unstable New York City childhood, which was marked by violent outbursts from an alcoholic father and drove him to find comfort in the family cats. Carr's gift for narrative momentum gives shape to the potentially flimsy premise, and he wrings real pathos from this tale of wounded souls finding one another. Even readers without their own furry friend will be moved. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (Apr.)
Critique du Guardian
She had eyes that were "remarkable for their deep amber colour, as well as for their enormous size and proportion to her head". Keen to communicate with her in a profound sense, Carr closed his eyes, and "reopened them several times, the slow blink of friendship". Emboldened that Masha "seemed receptive", he then did what anyone might in his position: he adopted her - for Masha is a cat - and took her home with him, where they'd spend the next 17 years, hunkered down together, inseparable. "If you are tempted to use such a phrase as just a cat," the author warns early in his new memoir, "I can only hope that you read on and discover not only that she ruled her untamed world, but brought life-affirming purpose to my own." Throughout the 352 pages of My Beloved Monster, Carr, an American crime writer and military historian who died earlier this year from cancer aged 68, sets out what may be the most effusive paean to cat love ever committed to paper. Carr had a complicated life. As a writer, he came to prominence with his million-selling 1994 crime novel, The Alienist, but the fallout from his unhappy childhood defined him. He'd been raised in New York in the 60s and 70s with "often violent alcoholic" parents. His father, Lucien Carr, was part of the beat crowd and, his son relays, "had a habit of knocking me down flights of stairs". The reason soon seemed clear: "He was trying to kill me." Within these pages, Masha is not merely beloved pet but partner, confidante, equal Little wonder, then, that Carr went on to develop a profound mistrust for humanity in general. Throughout his life, he suffered with ill-health. He had peritonitis, extensive scarring across his torso and stomach, and further chronic health problems that, he believed, nixed any potential for lasting romance. He moved to the Misery Mountains in upstate New York, where he lived alone, except for cats. When My Beloved Monster opens, Carr is already pining the loss of one, Suki. Masha, a wild Siberian, is the necessary replacement. Carr believes himself to be "some crossbreed" between feline and human, and therefore able to communicate with cats. When he adopted Masha, who had long been overlooked at the animal shelter owing to a feral nature that terrified potential candidates and staff alike, "something that sounded suspiciously like yeah! popped out of her mouth". Within these pages, Masha is not merely beloved pet but partner, confidante, equal. Together, they suffered - his ongoing poor health, her frequent fights with inquisitive dogs and territorial bears - but they brought succour to each other. When Carr died in May, the Guardian obituary noted that he did not take kindly to negative reviews of his books, particularly if they were by women. With Masha, he finally found a female he could get along with. (Her memoir, had she been able to write it, might have proved even more revealing.) It's a cold hard fact that most pet memoirs don't end well, and My Beloved Monster fulfils that necessary circle-of-life narrative. Carr dealt with it stoically because he believed in life after death, convinced they'd one day be reunited. "Since falling on to this Earth, I have proved as difficult for my fellow human beings as they have often proved for me," he writes. "But for Masha, no such questions. I was enough." His final book is certainly testament to that.
Critique de Kirkus
A Siberian Forest cat spends 17 years with her brilliant, reclusive, deeply unconventional human companion. Within pages of starting this moving book, connoisseurs of fine prose may find themselves gasping with delight, as will cat lovers. Carr, best known for his 1994 novel The Alienist and also a distinguished military historian, reveals that he has always recognized himself to be an "imperfectly reincarnated" feline. When he was 5, he handed his mother a drawing of a boy with the head of a cat and said, "This is me before I was born." You may well be convinced this is true by the end of Carr's amazing tale of commitment, communication, self-discovery, and adventure with his cat, Masha, a half-tame "wildling" who loves the music of Richard Wagner. The author has had a life of exceptional pain and tragedy: His father, the Beat Generation figure Lucien Carr, was given to episodes of physical abuse that resulted in significant emotional and medical consequences. Also, despite Carr's profound bonds with other beloved cats, several came to difficult ends he could not prevent. When he met Masha, who deftly ensured that he would take her home from the overwhelmed Vermont animal shelter where she landed after abuses of her own, he felt his redemption. The two become life partners and were never separated for more than a handful of nights, each of those for hospitalizations caused by Carr's ever more dire physical condition. The story of their life together in the spacious house the author built for himself in Rensselaer County, New York, and in the woods and grounds surrounding it, in all seasons and weather, is a testament to both the human and feline spirits. One of the most powerful and beautiful grief narratives ever written, including all the memoirs about people. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Critique de Booklist
It's almost inevitable: when we pick up a book about a beloved animal, real or fictional, we know the ending. Documenting his relationship with rescued Siberian Forest cat Masha, Carr (Surrender, New York, 2016) writes with the same intellectual and descriptive rigor his crime fiction and history books are known for. And despite the foregone conclusion and the fact that, like Masha, the author suffers from diseases that may cut his life short, this narrative poem to the intertwined spirits of a companion animal and her human will live on as a love story of the best, most ethereal kind. In snapshots, Masha fights off a bear and fisher; author and cat deal with her arthritis and his neuropathy; Masha explores the woods and steals houseguests' socks. For his part, Carr battles IRS agents, innumerable hospitalizations, and surgery, forges partnerships with Masha's veterinarian and the caretakers who watch over Masha when he can't, and manages, somehow, to continue to write with aplomb and finesse. Tears will flow, and they will be warranted.