Product Description

THE AUTHOR OF the acclaimed To All Appearances a Lady has done it again—produced a magical, multi-layered page-turner of a novel that scales vast imaginative heights. Cat’s Pilgrimage is the story of 14-year-old Cathreen, who, estranged from her mother and fleeing the consequences of a schoolmate’s murder, escapes to England to live with her father. There, she is swept up into a place where good and evil, justice, vengeance and enduring love vie for a place in the human heart, a place where the present brushes up against mythology and an all-seeing cat named Cutthroat watches over them all. A powerful modern-day fairytale, Cat’s Pilgrimage will appeal to lovers of contemporary literary fiction with a fantastical touch.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #624060 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-20
• Binding: Paperback
• 299 pages

Amazon.ca
Cat's Pilgrimage is a tale of crossing boundaries. After a group of Vancouver Island teens steps over a moral line when they bully a girl at a beach party and leave her to drown, one of the teens, Cathreen, travels to England to find her father and begins the slow journey into adulthood. In England the borders between our world and the supernatural become blurred, and Cathreen finds herself in a strange land populated by mystical cats, dead people come back to life, and magical stones fallen from Lucifer's crown.

Cat's Pilgrimage follows the lives of several characters, and the mundane meets the fantastic in each case as their lives intertwine. Cathreen's father, Jag, accidentally reanimates the corpse of a murder victim, who then disrupts the lives of several old acquaintances and Cathreen herself in an attempt to find his "master." Nick, a rich landowner who abandons his land to nomadic travellers, is haunted by his dead father and the ghost of an executed king. When Cathreen finds her way into the company of Nick, she is stalked by the dead man, who is kept at bay by a mystical dog. Cathreen's mother and stepfather follow her to England and blunder into the middle of all this, with disastrous results. There is no strong linear plot here, and little to unify the various narrative threads and characters. Instead, the book is more of a web, an assortment of lives and of reality and unreality, all tangled together. Cat's Pilgrimage is a book that demands readers pay attention, not only to its twisting storylines but also to our dreams and fantasies, where our lives are truly lived. --Peter Darbyshire

About the Author
MARILYN BOWERING is an award-winning poet, playwright and author. Her first novel, To All Appearances a Lady, was a New York Times Notable Book, and her second novel, Visible Worlds, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Born in Winnipeg, she has lived and worked in the US, Greece, Scotland, and Spain, and now makes her home in Sooke, BC.

Customer Reviews

Family fantasies
Reading fantasy is to enter the world of the infinite. Restrictions are few - the implausible becomes commonplace, characters achieve extraordinary capacities, and plots may be as convoluted as the author's talent allows. The mundane is invoked only as a form of contrast to inventiveness. Bowering's story of a disenchanted teen-ager seeking her father in a far land isn't new, but her handling of how the narrative unfolds exhibits a poet's novel approach. It's a challenging read for a wide spectrum of readers.

Cathreen seems destined to be drawn into difficult circumstances. She is caught up in the strange disappearance of a school mate. Children, especially teen-agers, can exhibit an inexplicable level of cruelty. Their world, often hidden from parents, can be terrfying. Cathreen's desire to be reunited with her father leads her from one horror to another as she tries to resolve her needs with his. She becomes embroiled in a bizarre community of recluses. Nick, the community's founder, is a "back to the land" advocate. He attracts a string of characters, including a revived "bog man". Galt becomes an agent of aggressive loyalties - with fatal results. Cathreen must navigate through this collection of misfits in her drive to join Jag, her father.

Bowering caps her previous stories of mixed fantasy and reality with this tale. As a poet, Bowering brings a different tone to her stories. She's able to mix two genres seamlessly, never allowing fantasy to overcome real-life attitudes and events. If you are a devotee of "fantasy realism", you will find this a captivating tale. Bowering weaves a vivid tale as filled with human values. Her use of fantasy adds a touch of excitement to her sense of reality. She artfully conveys Cathreen's conern for her father along with her youthful adaptability. A fine book for nearly all ages. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]