Review
'Splendidly realised Cornish moorland setting, wellies, ruts, dripping sheep ... Gale's specialist forte being pathos into bathos, tears of desolation leaking into the gravy, but he writes about the difficult emotions with delicacy, perception and a rare ferocious charm.' Guardian 'The Cat Sanctuary is a book with claws. It has a soft surface - a story set in sloping Cornish countryside, touching on love, families and forgiveness, delivered in a gentle, straightforward prose - but from time to time it catches you unawares. Scratch the surface, suggests Gale, and you draw blood.' The Times 'Gale's novels always catch one a little short with their flaky situations and obliquely deranged behaviour. It is only later - when the slippery charm has conveyed its resilience to everyday brutalities never far away - that his books reveal their grace and beauty. While no less light-footed than its predecessors, The Cat Sanctuary has darker intimations ... The tone is gentle rather than militant, as though the crushing masculinity the women have experienced might find some small antidote in the tender mercies of his style.' Observer 'Gale is a charmingly idiosyncratic writer who could not write a cliche if he tried. Spiced with mischievous irony, this engrossing story contains some interesting apercus on the process of novel writing.' Telegraph 'Like Gale's previous novels, it's an elegantly menacing, enjoyable read that starts as it means to go on - dynamically. The Cat Sanctuary presents people's lives and coiled springs, wound tighter and tighter until suddenly they unleash themselves on their nearest and dearest ... It's a deep and moving book; highly recommended.' New Woman
Product Description
A powerful and moving novel in which Patrick Gale casts a compassionate yet satirically sharp eye over the pains and abuses inflicted by families, friends and lovers. Judith and Deborah are sisters driven apart by traumatic events in their childhood, but thrown back together again when Deborah's diplomat husband is accidentally assassinated. Judith's lover, Joanna, the instigator of this awkward reunion, finds that as the sisters' murky past is raked up, so too is her own, and the three women become embroiled in a tangle of passion and recrimination.
