Determined Characters by Paula Fox Assessment – A Story of Infidelity (and an Indignant Cat) | Times2

Who is the Most Terrible Cat in Literature? There is behemoth in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, a feline demon with a penchant for beheading writers. There is the creepy tabby François in Emile Zola’s adultery novel Thérèse Raquin, who sees Thérèse and Laurent mating in “devilish ecstasy”. But the cat chasing me is the half-starved stray in Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters. On the first pages of the novel, we see this filthy creature bite into Sophie Bentwood, an elegant middle-aged Brooklynite who fed her a saucer with milk.

The stray – a domesticated creature gone wild – embodies a discomfort that permeates this skinny, nervous novel. It has a huge, pumpkin-like head that is “cheeked and unprincipled and