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Bezig met laden... All My Cats (Penguin Modern Classics) (origineel 1986; editie 2020)door Bohumil Hrabal (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkAll My Cats door Bohumil Hrabal (1986)
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. I was not expecting this to go in the direction it did. This is the novella that rivals Crime and Punishment more than almost any other I can think of. ( ) In 1965, having published his first books to good sales, Hrabal and his wife purchase a country house an hour away from the city where they live and where his wife works. Like a fair number of rural places, it comes with hot and cold running cats- a feral colony which is really quite tame. When they spend the weekend at the cottage, or when Hrabal retreats there to write, the cats flow into the house like a tide, sleeping on the bed, and eating well. When in Prague, Hrabal worries about their welfare. Meanwhile, the cats do what feral cats do- they breed. And when there, his wife frequently utters the only line of dialogue she is allowed: “What are we going to do with all these cats!?” Does this sound like a nice, heartwarming story, about a man who loves cats and rescues them? After all, the cover is adorable pencil drawings of cats… but think again. This is no Disney story. Yes, this is a man who loves cats. But as time goes on, he becomes overcome with pressures. The neighbors complain about the cats because they are killing birds. He is under pressure to produce more writing. He is under pressure because of the cost of feeding the cats. And, of course, there is his wife, worrying about the feline deluge. And this leads him to some shocking, violent acts- the kills some of the cats, very brutally. This is no needle of mercy from the vet; this is being beaten to death. And as he does it, he knows it’s wrong, and he knows he had a choice to be merciful, because he lies to his wife and tells her he went to the vet and got chloroform for them. And then the pressure on him gets worse, because he feels terrible causing such pain to the cats and kittens. I believe it created a psychotic break of sorts. I was horrified by the book. I was not expecting this sort of deliberate violence; it literally made me nauseous. I found it more awful than any work of fictional horror could be. Now, I realize this was a different time and place from my own life; there was no trap/neuter/release programs going on then and there, and spay and neuterings were probably too expensive, especially in bulk. But he did, as I say, have a choice in how he dealt with the matter and that is what repels me. Now, the prose is intriguing; the man had writing talent. I kept reading, and finished the book. But I cannot recommend it to anyone who loves cats. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
In the autumn of 1965, flush with the unexpected success of his first published books, the Czech author Bohumil Hrabal bought a cottage in Kersko, about an hour's drive east of Prague. From then until his death in 1997, he divided his time between Prague and Kersko, where he wrote and tended to a community of feral cats. Over the years, his relationship to cats grew deeper and more complex, becoming a measure of the pressures, both private and public, that impinged on his life as a writer. Despite the tender love he feels for the cats, especially his favorites who share his bed, there are moments of intense violence--as he controls the feline population explosion explosively. All My Cats, written in 1983 after a serious car accident, is best seen as a confessional memoir, the chronicle of an author who becomes overwhelmed by his cats and his life, and is driven to the brink of madness by the dilemmas his indulgent love for the animals have created. In the end,All My Cats becomes a book about Hrabal's relationship to nature, about the unlikely sources of redemption that come to him unbidden, like a gift from the cosmos--and about love. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)891.8Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages West and South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Slovene, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian)LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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