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Title: Darconville's Cat by Alexander Theroux ISBN: 0-385-15951-X Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: April, 1981 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $15.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (6 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: I wouldn't call it entertaining...
Comment: I felt compelled to review this book since all the other reviews gave this book five stars. The book is creative, unique, interesting, and insightful - but I wouldn't describe it as entertaining. There are multiple chapters that are just lists - maybe clever or significant, but it gets rather dull reading through a list so after a while I started skimming very rapidly through such chapters. There are also entire chapters devoted to one character's dialogue, usually in the form some kind of philosophizing speech. In some such chapters there were compelling ideas and well crafted lines, but once again, there was too much sheer text, without conflict or a direct relationship to the plot, to describe the chapter as a whole as entertaining. Overall, I think I would have enjoyed Darconville's Cat much more were it 307 pages, not 703.

Rating: 5
Summary: A book that almost defies description
Comment: A synthesis of the finest of art , prose, poetry, logic and sarcasim. A love story that isn't. The book is unintentionally self referntial when Theroux' character states something is like a Bosch painting--the meaning is in a small dot. Cunningly argumentative, pure literati. The ride turn's into the greatest turn since Alice goes to Wonderland. I read this book when I wa 16. I let my most intellectual freinds read it and it became their favorite book. You will never forget Dr. Crucifrer who will cause frissons as you read--the best character created in literature. A sesquipedalian's fix--beware, have your Oxford unabridged dictionary. Ride this moster literary wave.

Buy it read it and be swpt into a rainbow of experiences.

BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely engrossing, immersive, and rich..!
Comment: Having thumbed through this book at a bookstore, I was immediately intrigued: flipping through the chapters, I encountered poems, catalogues, a dialogue in the form of Greek tragedy, essays, rich descriptions, hilarious excerpts from a naughty novel, even a page that was completely black. If this makes the novel sound fractured and confusing, that is far from the case--the perspectives are woven together in a beautiful and engrossing synthesis, and each voice that he speaks in adds a new (and typically extremely enjoyable) facet to his story.

As another reader said, its kernel is a love story, and it is a beautiful and lovingly-crafted tale of the relationship between Darconville and his young love, Isabel. It is a romance, completely, and dwells a great deal on the beautiful winging idealism that lovers share, but at the same time, it is continually and alternately varied through Theroux's unbelievable and skillful array of voices and beautiful, poignant description.

This book is a masterpiece, but it's not everyone's masterpiece. He does get carried away from time to time on his vast lists (most notably the library of misogynistic literature and "The Unholy Litany"). His thoroughness and vocabulary used in description often requires a more rigorous attention. Finally, I encountered many a suspected hapax legomenon whilst reading his book, words that Theroux has coined by drawing from his multi-linguistic mastery: "gynotikolobomassophile?" Well, he could have said something to the extent of "woman's earlobe-lover," but that wouldn't be Theroux, and that wouldn't have made his book better: it is the differences I savor, the unconventionality, and the color and richness with which he can imbue a scene, an emotion, or (especially!) a person.

If you have a little patience and a great love for the English language, or given Theroux, language in general, give this book a read: I envy you, on the brink of discovering a nigh-perfect novel!

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