When I went into one of my local bookshops to spend some book tokens on a copy of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson that I'd been eyeing earlier, my attention was caught by another book: A Cat, a Hat and a Piece of String by Joanne Harris. I immediately liked the title, and after taking a good look at the cover design (which I liked) and reading the synopsis on the back, I decided to take A Cat home with me, since I had the book tokens anyway.
A Cat, a Hat and a Piece of String is a collection of short stories, written by Joanne Harris, who happens to be the author of Chocolat. I happen to love short stories and I happen to love Chocolat (both the book and the film, which was directed by Lasse Hallström), so understandably I was pretty excited for this book. Of the 16 short stories, some are based on real-life events, whereas others incorporate themes from romance, mythology and fantasy. Some stories feature recurring characters, whereas others are complete stand-alones.
Some of the major themes of the collection include death, especially how the people left behind cope with their loss. "Would You Like to Reconnect?" is a story about a woman whose son dies, whereafter Twitter becomes her coping mechanism. Another big theme is loneliness: many of the characters in Harris' stories are somehow misunderstood or 'different'. In "Dee Eye Why", a divorced former actor buys a derelict house and starts getting it back into shape - in the process distancing himself even more from his ex-wife and children. But another major theme is love. I particularly liked "Ghosts in the Machine", which is about the communication between a dj who runs the night shift at a local radio station and a nocturnal listener.
I picked this book up with the intention of reading it for Halloween (which I did), and although I liked it, I didn't love it. On the whole, however, it is probably more accurate to say that I liked most of the stories, loved a few and disliked a few. I especially enjoyed the stories which had an open ending. For example, the story about a "newborn baby created with sugar, spice and lashings of cake" raises a lot of questions and does not answer many. There is also a story called "Muse", which I really liked initally, but then started to resent because the plot is pretty much spelled out for the reader.
Although I did feel that some of the stories were quite predictable, I massively enjoyed Harris' style of writing. The only thing that did bother me was that she introduced every story with a few lines, saying where she got the inspiration from. This, for me, completely broke the suspension of disbelief and pulled me out of the fictional 'zone', so I started skipping them. When I read the book for the second time (in preparation for the video review on my channel), I did read them, and found them to be quite nice and informative. I would've preferred them to be printed somewhere else, though.
I would recommend this book to people who like stories in the style of Neil Gaiman, as well as slightly more realistic stories with fewer supernatural elements. Personally, I enjoyed this book a lot more the second time around, so I'd definitely recommend you give it a fair chance if you don't fall in love with it on the first read. Then again, life is short and there are too many books to be read already. ;)
A Cat, a Hat and a Piece of String on...
Joanne Harris on...
A Cat, a Hat and a Piece of String is a collection of short stories, written by Joanne Harris, who happens to be the author of Chocolat. I happen to love short stories and I happen to love Chocolat (both the book and the film, which was directed by Lasse Hallström), so understandably I was pretty excited for this book. Of the 16 short stories, some are based on real-life events, whereas others incorporate themes from romance, mythology and fantasy. Some stories feature recurring characters, whereas others are complete stand-alones.
Some of the major themes of the collection include death, especially how the people left behind cope with their loss. "Would You Like to Reconnect?" is a story about a woman whose son dies, whereafter Twitter becomes her coping mechanism. Another big theme is loneliness: many of the characters in Harris' stories are somehow misunderstood or 'different'. In "Dee Eye Why", a divorced former actor buys a derelict house and starts getting it back into shape - in the process distancing himself even more from his ex-wife and children. But another major theme is love. I particularly liked "Ghosts in the Machine", which is about the communication between a dj who runs the night shift at a local radio station and a nocturnal listener.
I picked this book up with the intention of reading it for Halloween (which I did), and although I liked it, I didn't love it. On the whole, however, it is probably more accurate to say that I liked most of the stories, loved a few and disliked a few. I especially enjoyed the stories which had an open ending. For example, the story about a "newborn baby created with sugar, spice and lashings of cake" raises a lot of questions and does not answer many. There is also a story called "Muse", which I really liked initally, but then started to resent because the plot is pretty much spelled out for the reader.
Although I did feel that some of the stories were quite predictable, I massively enjoyed Harris' style of writing. The only thing that did bother me was that she introduced every story with a few lines, saying where she got the inspiration from. This, for me, completely broke the suspension of disbelief and pulled me out of the fictional 'zone', so I started skipping them. When I read the book for the second time (in preparation for the video review on my channel), I did read them, and found them to be quite nice and informative. I would've preferred them to be printed somewhere else, though.
I would recommend this book to people who like stories in the style of Neil Gaiman, as well as slightly more realistic stories with fewer supernatural elements. Personally, I enjoyed this book a lot more the second time around, so I'd definitely recommend you give it a fair chance if you don't fall in love with it on the first read. Then again, life is short and there are too many books to be read already. ;)
A Cat, a Hat and a Piece of String on...
Joanne Harris on...