Cat's Grin (Twentieth Century Lives)

By François Maspero

Book Overview

A wise and bitter novel about memory and death. -New Yorker

...The reader will be grateful for this memoir of the times. -New York Times Book Review

What you hear is Cat's voice, which is also the voice of a generation...Maspero has written a novel that has at its center the particulars of a believable character's anguish and sorrow-a novel this is about the enduring truths of loving and surviving. -St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A bitter, finely detailed, authentic coming-of-age novel.-Kirkus Reviews

Hiding quietly behind his Cheshire grin, Cat has seen that men do terrible things to one another, and that they invent lies to justify their acts. In Paris, he has befriended a young bar attendant and, through her, he is introduced to a world as cruel as anything he saw during the war. Here, in the streets and cafes, the violence is aimed at women....Cat's Grin is an exceptionally fine novel, a wise and humane look at a world that is both shocking and familiar. -San Francisco Chronicle

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0941533336
• ISBN13: 9780941533331
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: New Amsterdam Books
• Length: 295 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Cat's Grin will sneak into your heart

Cat's Grin is an extremely personal and profound look at the Occupation and Liberation of France through the eyes of a boy plowing through both adolesence and this tumultuous time period. Cat (Luc) recalls pre-war France and his family life so precisely that the reader lives it too. As his life begins to unravel, Cat responds in his typical hilarious and wise fashion. He goes on a brave, desperate search for his beloved brother, Antoine, a fighter for the Resistance; leads his fellow schoolboys in paper airplane flying adventures in the Luxembourg gardens; and finally must come to terms with the unendurable impacts of the war. With writing that is both stark and eloquent, Cat's Grin will sneak into your heart and stay there for a long time.