Wow! eBook
The Cat Came Back
Author(s): Hilary Mullins (Author)
- Publisher: Naiad Pr
- Publication Date: January 1, 1993
- Edition: First Edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 156280040X
- ISBN-13: 9781562800406
Book Description
Seventeen-year-old Stevie tells the story of how her life changes after she encounters a teacher named Rik, a women’s ice hockey coach named Granite, another teacher named Mick, and Andrea, a new classmate
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Gr. 7-12. Other than Annie on My Mind (1982), there has been very little YA fiction about growing up lesbian. Mullins’ breathless novel is about prep school senior Stevie, who tells in diary form how she falls in love with her classmate Andrea. Stevie describes the initial attraction and excitement, then her doubt and denial (Is she some kind of “sickie” to think about her friend that way? “I mean it’s QUEER, LEZZY, DYKE stuff!”); but they do get together and become tender, passionate lovers as well as friends. Unfortunately, the diary’s one note of intensity gets boring. Even if Stevie is meant to be a naive teenager, there are too many multiple exclamation points and inarticulate outbursts (“Love, yeah, this incredible fondness”). All kinds of melodrama in the prep school scene surround the love story: Stevie is freeing herself from a three-year involvement with a malevolent male teacher who seduced her at 14. She’s freeing herself from a bullying ice hockey coach. Her father is ranting over the telephone because she didn’t get into Harvard. And the diary includes her creative writing projects, full of metaphors about beasts keeping girls captive. Still, the love affair is compelling. Many teenagers will recognize their conflicts here. One of the best moments in the book is when Stevie discovers Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle and begins to accept herself. Books can help. Hazel Rochman
