Cat Out of Hell

Creepy horror-fun. (Yes, I realize that sounds oxymoron-ish. Lol.)

Quick, chilling entertainment if you're wanting a horror/mystery mash-up with along with some dark chuckles... and a cat who wants Daniel Craig to voice him if there's a movie version. It reminded me a bit of a slightly creepy version of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore & other books of that ilk with its various literary & cultural references. I found it entertaining & worth my time to read.

Maybe a slight spoiler (?)...
I must admit that it did cross my mind to wonder if the ending might end up being based on some type of grammatical double-cross (since Truss did author Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation), but that was not the show more case! show less

A funny thriller / romp in a parody of a Denis Wheatley novel from the 70s with post-modern touches such as different narrative techniques: screen play, emails, transcripts of recordings and letters. Lynne Truss is an accomplished writer and one with a great sense of fun and she has given herself full rein with this novel.
Captain is the cat out of hell and his mis-understood side-kick is called Roger. Together they explore the Mediterranean until they are separated. The 'hero' is Alec, a retired librarian, recently widowed and spending time in a remote cottage by the sea grieving his wife. He is sent the Roger files from an ex-colleague of his wife, Dr Winterton, who it turns out, can't string a narrative together from beginning to end show more and neither it seems can Alec, as we get snippets of the story over a period of time from various sources. The whole story finishes with a scene Denis Wheatley would have been proud of and that included a large deserted house, the gates of hell and a blizzard, as well as two fiendish cats. All along the novel has lots of fun with talking animals, Sherlock Holmes references and jibes at librarians, particularly the colleague who can leave an old cardigan over his chair to try and fool his fellow work mates he is in the building but who in fact no one has seen for some time. What fun and an excellent read over the Christmas period. show less

In CAT OUT OF HELL, Lynne Truss explores the "cats have nine lives" adage with tremendous imagination and cleverness. Retired widower Alec sequesters himself in a seaside cottage to grieve for his beloved late wife, Mary, and there he opens some documents one of Mary's old colleagues sent him for an unknown reason. Though the reason remains murky for some time, the story the documents tell is an absorbing one, involving a kindhearted but hapless man and an evil (or is he?) talking cat called Roger who is "one in a million." Sherlock Holmes fans will be delighted; cat lovers might look askance at their pets. But as Roger says, "Once someone has shown you a convincingly different way of looking at the world, it's hard to remember how you show more saw it before."

Quotes
[Private until publication] show less

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com

Reviewing books is a bit of a balancing act sometimes. I thoroughly enjoyed Lynne Truss’s comic horror tale ‘Cat Out of Hell’, and stand by the 4-star rating I’ve given it. The rating is an entirely subjective one though, it’s my opinion of the book immediately after finishing it. It’s what I think of the book now, in a year’s time I might feel differently. I write this in the absolute certainty that a lot of people who read the review won’t like the book at all.

Anyway, enough navel gazing, on with the review.

‘Cat Out of Hell’ is a silly, witty, gripping, inventive and occasionally creepy short horror novel about evil felines and the truth of their nine lives. The show more protagonist is Alec, a mild-mannered librarian who gets pulled into investigating mysterious goings on relating to an urbane talking cat Roger. What follows is as ludicrous as you might expect. Thankfully the author tells the story with such enthusiasm and joy that it works.

The cover proudly boasts ‘as read on BBC Radio 4’ and that sums the books up perfectly. It’s very British: cosy and clever and entertaining. There is horror here (the climax is pretty gruesome), but it’s not going to give anyone nightmares. The gore is theatrical, appropriately enough given that it’s published by the revitalised Hammer brand. The horror often feels like something that might have graced British cinema screens in the 1960s or 70s. The blood never seems truly real and the horrific events somehow distant.

Like many classic horror tales it often uses letters and second hand accounts of events to tell the story. This allows Truss to keep the talking cats just enough at arms length that they don’t seem completely ridiculous. She brings things up to date by throwing in emails, out of office replies (to great comic effect) and references to YouTube clips. International audiences may struggle with the with sheer volume of British cultural references packed into the book. Truss throws in Sherlock Holmes, Kenneth Branagh, James Bond, Judi Dench, The Durrells and Littlehampton among others. The weaving of such specifics into the book gives it a definite sense of place and time. This might have seemed at odds with the fantastic events Truss is relaying, but her light comic touch makes it work.

That comic tone as well as the references make this an almost overwhelmingly English book. Truss infuses it with a gentle surrealism that’s a little like Monty Python. There is also a warm affection for English culture and places that worked perfectly for me but may not for every reader.

If the above appeals then I think you’ll enjoy this book. It’s not deep or groundbreaking, but it is gently entertaining, funny and creative. Best read by the fire on a wintry Sunday afternoon with a pot of tea and some chocolate digestives. show less

Lynne Truss — best known for the clever punctuation guide Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation — branches out into fiction with Cat Out of Hell.

In Cat Out of Hell, a perspicacious talking cat named Roger meets a singularly dim-witted human, Will Caton-Pines, nicknamed Wiggy. Wiggy’s sister Jo, who had recently acquired Roger, has vanished. To say any more would be to spoil the fun; this slender book is best approached with very little prior information. However, let me say that Cat Out of Hell isn’t the light-hearted philosophical discussion that I thought it was going to be, but a pretty dark, if hilarious, mystery with many, many surprising twists. Truss suffuses this mystery novel with the same show more lovely dry British humor that made Eats, Shoots & Leaves a best-seller plus dark elements worthy of H.P. Lovecraft or M.R. James.

For those interested in the Audible audio version, narrator Mike Grady does yeoman’s work with the voices, particularly the cat’s self-confident American drawl and Wiggy’s rapid, nebbishy twitterings. show less

This was a wonderfully creepy little book. Alec Charlesworth, recently widowed and recently retired librarian, receives a packet of material from a former colleague he scarcely remembers. The material contains the outlandish story of a man named Wiggy and a talking cat named Roger who seem to be mixed up in an occult mystery involving the death of Wiggy's sister. Despite himself, Alec finds the mystery compelling. But as he reviews the material and begins to dig about in mystery, he is horrified to discover that the mystery seems to involve the death of his own dear wife, Mary and her involvement with an investigation into satanic possession in cats. Eventually, Alec must rely the help of his faithful dog, Watson and the questionable show more goodwill of Roger to uncover and disarm the diabolical scheme behind the death's of Jo, Mary and others. For anyone who knows cats, love them or hate them, this book will bring a sneaking sense of dread. The horror of the tale is balanced by frequent touches of outrageous humor. show less

Cat Out Of Hell
Sally Apollon
Overall Score: 8 out of 10


This book grabbed my attention from the start. The style was easy-going, but funny, touching and clever, well-referenced, impeccable even. I had a quiet weekend, so I read it in two days.

Once you allow for the presence of the talking cat, it becomes more & more intriguing. It is easy to get engrossed in the tale that Alec, the narrator, gets pulled into. It becomes more and more compelling the closer he realizes his degree of involvement. A retired, widowed and despondent Librarian is an unlikely hero, much less the one to overthrow Beelzebub, but he is engaging and the story does work. I think the improbability of it all becomes the more convincing as the Alec’s reactions are show more realistic. Such as, when the dog, Watson talks, our narrator is second guessing himself, in an email to Wiggy, wondering if it was a hallucination. He decides that whether or not it was Watson it sounded like something he would say: “Pack enough chicken treats for a fortnight”, hilarious.

An ongoing joke in the book is the in-joke between Alec and Mary about lines that they may say to Watson—which are quotes from Sherlock Holmes to Watson, a nice, neat touch; particularly when, upon finally meeting Alec and Watson, Roger says; “Ah, Watson, come at once, if convenient, if inconvenient, come all the same”. It finally seems fitting! Especially if you can imagine it said in Roger the cat’s Vincent Price voice.

I really was partial to the couple of references to Brideshead Revisited, since that is one of my favourite dramas; I really got the reference of Roger and Captain as “young men instead of cats” whereupon you would “assume they had been for a drink and a swim after their final examinations, and that there was an ancient teddy bear named Aloysius lying half hidden in the grass”. This did give a charmed, yet hedonistic mood to the era that the cats were enjoying in this scene. They were elegant and cultivated, world travelers, with minions at their command. (p40).

I also was very touched by the return to the two lines from Hamlet (a favourite play!): “How all occasions do inform against me” and “And a man’s life’s no more than to say “One””. I’m still slightly puzzling over that last one. This in the context of a moving examination of life’s fragility—when Watson is nearly run over by a cyclist and Alec is so shaken it takes him a while to recover and he ponders the speed with which life can be GONE: “One moment you can say the words: “I am”. And the next you have no first person, no present tense, and no entitlement, as a subject, to act on any verbs of any kind”. Just a delightful perspective and ironic turn of phrase and grammar! It also made me wonder if the author had been bereaved herself, because it does tap in keenly to an over-arching theme of bereavement.
The end section of the book, when the meaning of the books and the REAL reasons for cat’s nature (they’ve lost their evil powers and are HUMILIATED!) was cryptically funny; even to the point of Roger kneading Prideaux’s lap in preparation for slashing his femorals—hilarious! Additionally, the two cats disappearing in a locked embrace down the well—very appropriate!

There is enough change of location and mixture of audio, reading, action; there is a lot of drama and stage direction that suggest that this would translate equally well as a play or film.

This was a surprisingly good book; although it seems lightweight at first appearances it had hidden depths and was pleasingly up-to-date, but had great respect for history and literature, and of course, grammar. I was somewhat taken aback at the end…to see that what at first look had the appearance of a murder mystery, ended as a touching tribute and even a diversion from the grief of losing his wife.

I cannot let the review go by without saying how much it IRKS me, or maybe I’m just jealous…that a woman wrote a book—a very good one, from the perspective of a man. I felt the same way about “She’s Come Undone” by Wally Lamb a first person-account of a woman unravelling that is written by a man! I think I just don’t think I could successfully get inside the head of the opposite sex. I don’t know why it perturbs me the way it does, but it does. I obsess over it and keep returning to the title page JUST TO MAKE SURE! Otherwise, I find it hard to fault this short but precise little book. I literally can’t wait to give it away to see what my friends think of it. show less