Cat Out Of Hell, Lynn Truss
Do you trust your cat? Should you trust your cat? Personally, I tend to feel slightly suspicious of the feline species. As a child, I remember being delighted when my child-minder's cat started spontaneously giving birth in the middle of the living room. It truly was one of the highlights of my fifth year on the planet. As I grew older though, not only did I develop a fairly hefty allergy but I also began to notice the rather eerie way that cats ... watch. They observe. They know too much. It is this sense of unease that Lynne Truss has tapped into with this fabulous novella.
Truss is perhaps best known for the phenomenally successful Eats, Shoots and Leaves series and, of course, for having had an affair with a con-man as a teenager. This experience was made into a film, An Education, where her character was played by Carey Mulligan. Cat Out Of Hell has been serialised on Radio 4 as the most recent Book at Bedtime, which is always a good omen about any book. Horror is a genre I usually steer well clear from - I scare ridiculously easily. Still, Cat Out Of Hell is not your average horror story; the dedication is "To Gemma, who loves proper horror, with apologies". If you're in the mood for terror, look out for some Stephen King. If you're in the mood for a comic masterpiece, read Cat Out of Hell.
It has a very Gothic opening section; the narrator is Alec and he assures us that the story he is about to tell us is absolutely true and was brought to his attention while he was holidaying in Norfolk with his dog Watson after the recent loss of Alec's adored wife Mary, while he was 'in search of silence and tranquility'. Fat chance. The beginning strongly reminded me of The Woman in Black, a book that chilled me to my core. While on holiday, he receives a collection of files by email under the heading 'ROGER' from a fellow academic, Dr Winterton. While their contents initially seems incredible, Alec is convinced not by any tendency to paranoia or belief in the paranormal but rather by the 'staggering stupidity' of the man who has put the files together, the utterly hopeless Wiggy. From there on, Alec finds himself dragged into a baffling world of diabolical sacrifice and feline revenge.