“Chemoule, a French cat”: Nathalie Quintane gives up
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Stephen Loye's drawings, as quick as claws, add to the charming nonchalance of the whole. POL
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Review It is in the first person and in a mockingly raspy language – a cat's tongue – that Chemoule undertakes to tell us about his hectic life ★★★☆☆
From Hoffmann's "The Cat Murr," a 19th-century gem, to Hiro Arikawa's "Memoirs of a Cat," a bestseller released in 2017, feline autobiography is close to establishing itself as a literary genre in its own right. In this regard, "I Am a Cat," a classic of Japanese literature by Natsume Sôseki and published at the dawn of the 20th century, remains one of the absolute references. It's the turn of Nathalie Quintane, an irreverent writer whose texts are often politically scathing ("What to Do with the Middle Classes?", "Everything Will Be Fine"), to give in to the cat. In this case, to a certain Chemoule.
At birth, the animal was named Michel Poniatowski. But after a closer examination of its anatomy, it was finally decided to give this beige cat with slightly converging blue eyes the sweet name of Chemoule. "So, all I lack is speech? Well, then, you're deaf," the delicate creature asks. Thus, it is in the first person and in a mockingly raspy language - a language of c…
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