A review by nicktomjoe
The Improbable Cat by Allan Ahlberg
4.0
A cat adopts a family, and grows into something more human, demanding, dangerous: shades of the short story by Kate Atkinson of a cat as substitute boyfriend; echoes of Little Shop ofHorrors. A curious mixture of real menace and high comedy, I wondered about the audience for this book. Not that I'd be so crass as to say it was "unsuitable for school use," but that the growing unease of the narrator - a child at the time of the incident, a puzzled adult as narrator - creates a sense of dread that is somehow wrong-footed by the light, colloquial child voice. With the child voice comes a real sense of anguish at a family falling apart. The (more or less) happy ending still presents a family not coping with trauma, disunified. The hiatus between this discomfort and the "cavalry charge" that rescues the family is unnerving.
Would I "allow" it in a class? What "use" would it be in school? Well, it's not a successor to "Woof," and it could be seen as a deceptive genre-bender like the problematic "Bye Bye Baby," and I would want anyone to read it with an accepting but critical eye.
Would I "allow" it in a class? What "use" would it be in school? Well, it's not a successor to "Woof," and it could be seen as a deceptive genre-bender like the problematic "Bye Bye Baby," and I would want anyone to read it with an accepting but critical eye.