Blog tour: The Cat Bride by Charlotte Tierney
This post is part of a blog tour organised by Random Things Blog Tours. I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.
‘The heatwave of 1995. Sixteen years since an infamous tiger-lynx hybrid escaped a small moorland zoo and killed a man. Sixteen years since the animal was euthanised. Sixteen years for the zoo to fall into disrepair.
‘Lowdy’s Mumma grew up in the zoo and when Lowdy falls ill, they’re forced to move to the old zoo for her to recover, still inhabited by her dying grandmother. As soon as they arrive, rumours surface of a big cat stalking the moors again. Vengeful locals blame the three women for an apex predator on the loose and invade the estate, searching for proof.
‘Mumma insists all the cats are dead. Grandma whispers that the “tynx” needs to be fed. Lowdy, still recovering from her own mysterious illness, has no idea what to believe. Can she even trust herself when she wakes up covered in ticks with no recollection of the night before?
‘As Lowdy searches for the truth – the truth of her childhood, what it means to be a woman, and the truth about the cats – she realises something catlike runs in the blood, something she cannot ignore.’
In The Cat Bride, by Charlotte Tierney, we follow 16-year-old Loveday (Lowdy) and her mum as, in the wake of an illness on Lowdy’s part, they move into her declining grandma’s large, crumbling house on the Yorkshire moors.
Up until sixteen years ago, the house’s grounds hosted a small-time zoo, which shut down when a big cat – rumoured to be a tiger-lynx hybrid, or a “tynx” – escaped and killed a visitor.
The local villagers, embittered by the decline in passing trade since the zoo closed, have never been quite convinced the tynx was actually put down, and when Lowdy and her mum show up, there’s a revival of whispers that a dangerous animal is prowling the area and terrorising people and wildlife alike, and renewed interest in spotting and destroying it.
I do like a shape-shifting story, so The Cat Bride was right up my street! Even better when the shape-shifting turns out to be real, and not explained away by sickness and/or an overly-active imagination (if I’ve read the author’s intentions correctly, anyway – if not, well, I want to believe!).
At the same time, Lowdy’s nocturnal transformation absolutely works as a metaphor for another of my favourite themes: coming of age.
As a cat, she’s establishing an identity separate from her family and discovering her power. In her human form, meanwhile, she’s feeling stifled and thwarted by her mother’s treatment of her, developing a separate, more companionable relationship with her hitherto unknown grandmother, and getting intense feelings for a boy who turns out to be rather disappointing – all hallmarks of the subgenre.
Lowdy’s mother’s extreme strictness (which she justifies as keeping her daugher safe and healthy) means you can’t help but sympathise with Lowdy, rather than thinking she’s being a brat who will understand when she’s older. Her mum clearly wants to keep her small and contained: talking to and handling her as one would a much younger child; locking her in an attic bedroom at night because she apparently sleepwalks; and seeming a bit keen to keep Lowdy’s hair shaved (apparently necessitated by her mysterious illness) and therefore unattractive to boys. I was absolutely cheering the teenager on in her increasing subversion.
Something else I really appreciated was the author’s frequent references to fairy tales, especially ones where animals turn into humans and vice versa, characters are imprisoned, and hair signifies strength and aids rebellion. Lowdy’s mother herself follows patterns of a fairy tale villain by keeping her daughter under lock and key and denying her agency – while also supressing her own nature, desires, and memories of wanting to be wild and free when she was Lowdy’s age.
I also got strong Shirley Jackson vibes from this novel (another good thing!). While the house is sprawling and its attached land vast and open to the moors (and vividly, eerily described to boot), the intense relationships between the three women who live there and are virtually one another’s whole world give it a claustrophobic feel that put me in mind of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Bird’s Nest.
Tierney does a great job evoking other things as well. The 1995 setting of the book feels authentic with its long evenings, iconic tunes, and damaging attitudes towards women (Lowdy and her mother originally live in a flat above the boarding house of a boys’ school; when the boys start behaving inappropriately towards Lowdy, it is she who must be removed). The author also captures the feeling of being an outsider as an adolescent brilliantly, while the excerpts from the “literature” of the cryptozoologists who lead the hunt for the tynx ring true.
The Cat Bride is a vivid and highly evocative novel that combines a couple of my favourite themes.
