Tomcat in Love

by Tim O'Brien

Book Overview

A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

In this wildly funny, brilliantly inventive novel, Tim O'Brien has created the ultimate character for our times. Thomas Chippering, a 6'6" professor of linguistics, is a man torn between two obsessions: the desperate need to win back his former wife, the faithless Lorna Sue, and a craving to test his erotic charms on every woman he meets...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0767902041
• ISBN13: 9780767902045
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Wickedly funny, yet still touching

Tim O'Brien has been a favorite of mine for nearly 25 years. His books are always deep and insightful, but they reached new levels of somberness with "The Lake of the Woods". "Tomcat In Love" is a delightfully unexpected left turn and reveals a surprisingly sharp comic talent.I usually find it difficult to enjoy a novel with a protagonist I can't admire. But Thomas Chippering is so delighfully self delusional that you can't help but giggle as he digs himself in deeper with every scheme he contrives. And yet amazingly you find yourself rooting for this buffoon as reaches new depths of social ineptitude. Other reviewers mention that Chippering is an unreliable narrator, but it is important to realize that he actually believes all the lies he is telling. Half the fun of reading this comic novel is reading between the lines to distinguish where what is really happening diverges from what Chippering is telling you.This is a funny, funny book. Even so, it confronts the reader with many serious issues, particularly the objectification of women. There's plenty to think about while you are laughing at the characters. That's one reason this book stays with you much longer than most comic novels.I gave a copy of this novel to my father, and after he finished it he sent it along to my brother. Tim O'Brien is exactly a generation between me and my father, and while there's plenty we can't see eye to eye on, we both found this novel extremely entertaining.Tim O'Brien is a treasure. Read this book!

Not normal Tim, but still great

I enjoyed this book and Tim O'Brien's signature style. Once again, as with Northern Lights, it is disconnected from Vietnam, but it has ties. Tom Chippering is a veteran and their is a chapter dealing with it, holding true to Tim's faithfullnes to his past.However, if there is anything Tim is great at writing it's the human psyche under any circumstance. Here, he beautifully portrays a pathetic, middle-aged sex addict who isn't very good at his antics of screw everything I can. He has charm, but is too hung up on his past to use it to its full potential. Instead, he is hellbent on seeking revenge upon his ex-wife, a disturbed in her own way, obsession of Chippering's. It has humor and drama, skepticism and redemption.It isn't normal Tim O'Brien. If you've read The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato or If I Die In A Combat Zone and you really liked those for being about Vietnam, then this is not for you. But if you are a fan of literature in general and Tim O'Brien's beautiful language and, in my eyes, flawless style, then please, buy a copy of this and enjoy it. It is easily readable in a day or two because there is a subtle tension that sneaks up on you and grabs hold right at the end, so you're thankful you didn't put it down. This is a great novel. I give it my highest recommendation.

The Man We Love to Hate

Tim O'Brien is, without a doubt, America's premier chronicler of the Vietnam War. Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried have become classics of that era and even In The Lake of the Woods deals largely with repercussions of the war's aftermath. Tomcat in Love, however, bears no resemblance to any of O'Brien's previous works and it is, amazingly, far more inventive, original and creative.Tomcat in Love is the darkly comic story of Minnesota resident, Thomas Chippering, a pompous, middle-aged Professor of Linguistics who has deluded himself into thinking he's irresistible to women...all of them. As Chippering, himself, says, "My celebrated biweekly seminars...are almost always booked to the limit with attentive, worshipful, ardent young lollipops eager to widen their horizons." Not since Nabokov created Humbert Humbert, has there been a more thoroughly unlikable and self-deceiving central character or one whom we so much love to hate.Chippering is definitely a man in love with words. "Words," he says, "have genuine substance, mass and weight and specific gravity." In fact, it is words and his knowledge of them, that places Chippering far above the ordinary man and woman. For, although Chippering flirts outrageously with every woman he meets, they all rebuff him, a problem Chippering falsely attributes to their far inferior linguistic skills. It's not that he's unattractive, he thinks, women have simply failed to appreciate him. The sad truth is, Chippering has been betrayed by the very words he loves so much. He does possess the skill to manipulate words, but at the cost of being able to feel even one honest emotion, about himself or others.Betrayed by words and betrayed by his wife of twenty-plus years, Lorna Sue (she left him for a Tampa real estate tycoon), Thomas Chippering decides to seek revenge. Exactly what this revenge entails encompasses Lorna Sue's diabolical brother, Herbie, who, as a child, had attempted to crucify Lorna Sue...literally. Although he only managed to pound one nail through her hand, Chippering still believes Lorna Sue to be scarred for life, emotionally as well as physically, and he bitterly blames Herbie for the loss of his wife.Chippering finally finds an ally in Mrs. Robert Kooshof (he cannot call her by her first name), the wife of an imprisoned veterinarian. Together they leave for Tampa where Chippering is hateful but hilarious as he concocts first one scheme then another in an effort to destroy Lorna Sue's marriage. Once again, though, Chippering falsely attributes his own sense of betrayal to a loss of linguistic skills rather than to his wife's abandonment. "The betrayal of love," he says, "...seems also to entail a fundamental betrayal of language and logic and human meaning." Even awash in a sea of betrayal, Chippering retains his pomposity.Does Chippering ever exact revenge? Does he ever get his well-deserved comeuppance? Our desire to know is great enough to keep us reading to the

Extraordinary book...you won't be the same after reading it.

I'm enormous fan of Tim O'Brien, but to be honest, I wasn't sure of what to make of this book when it came out in hardcover. Seemed wacky, I thought. Instead, I recently picked it in paperback, and just read. I was in store for an extraordinary journey.You have never met anyone in literature like Tom Chippering. You can't help but pull for the guy. The story is engrossing, hilarious, and often quite moving. Love, revenge, memory, friendships, new beginnings, letting go, devastation. Even if you are not much interested in the English language, you will never look at it the same way again. I don't want to say much more about the plot, but I will say that it is constantly riveting. At the end, I cried. I'm not sure why...perhaps, sadness or happiness or emotional exhaustion...perhaps, as Tom would say, I'll never know. I do know you should order and read this book immediately. O'Brien only enhances his status as my favorite living american writer. There is no equal.

A rewarding read, an astonishingly complex main character

Like the best of O'Brien's work, In The Lake of the Woods and The Things They Carried, Tomcat in Love is a supremely satisfying work of modern literature. Yet the depth of the characters, most notably Thomas Chippering--the most complex protagonist that you're ever likely to find--and the scope of the story make those master works look sketchy by comparison.The book is somewhat of a comedy, but the tragedy of Tom's lost love is anything but comic. It is real and poignant and it will surely make you remember, all to unpainfully, lost loves of your own. Just as you begin to sympathize with him, though, O'Brien shows what a chauvinistic scoundrel Tom can be. His so-called appreciation for women gets him into all sorts of trouble at work and at home.We also learn that Tom is capable of obsession that drives him to thoughts of revenge that will make you start to question his sanity. Whether or not those thoughts will be turned into action remains a very uncomfortable mystery until the end of the book.Those who like clean-cut main characters who are easy to figure out within a few pages will no doubt hate this book, as will some who do not understand that while Tom may think highly of himself, O'Brien might not. Either way, it is hard to deny the skill and craft of Tim O'Brien. Whether you like him or dislike him, seeing the world through Tom's eyes is a fascinating experience that will, at turns, make you laugh and shudder.