Annabelle and Thatch: a miracle on w82nd street.

 

What is coming over me?

I read very little for pleasure these days. I read for research, for reviewing ... not for fun. Not for enjoyment. And rare, rare is the moment when I get that nice fuzzy, warm feeling of awwwwww. Much less smile out loud. But yesterday ...

I was in my Layzboy intending to watch the dear old Marlborough Harness races. Wendy was on the couch with her iphone. And she was looking at me oddly. I was reading a book and ... I was what? Grinning, giggling, chortling, aaaawing ... and then I laughed out loud. I hav'n't done that since I read Aristophanes, sixty years ago.

So what was this book that was causing such mirth? Such ohhhhh-ing from unimpressible me?

I have known Annabelle and Thatch for a number of years. They made their first appearance on face book as the stars of some darling fictional-factional anecdotes posted by musician and writer, Larry Moore. I always looked forward to the next! And now they have their own book. And it's a book which goes into another dimension.  Here we have the delicious tales of the daily lives of two (extra)ordinary kittens, rescued from the Animal Shelter (which eats little kittens for supper) and brought up in a New York apartment block. But we also have - not incidentally - the story of seventy-something Larry into whose life they bring a huge ray of sunshine ... 

Larry Moore can write. Don't laugh, 50% of people who do, can't. Larry can. The tales roll from his pen (when Annabelle hasn't eaten it) with a joyous facility that commands you to smile, chortle, snigger and laugh. When Annabelle bosses little Thatch "Stop chewing on that crucifix. It's bad for your teeth", I fell off my Layzboy with laughter.

Annabelle, by the way, is not only a bossy big sister. She has ambitions to be a Broadway star ... but you have to read about that in HER book! She would demand 90% commission! Little Thatch is her Sancho Panza ...

There is a wondrous group of supporting characters. The pigeons and sparrows outside the window (what are they saying?), the shitty whingeing neighbour-with-a-bicycle across the hall, Val the caretaker upon whom Annabelle has a crush ('I don't. HE has a crush on ME'), the frightful and frightening man with the python ... but top-billing goes to ... you guessed it! 

It is all quite simply enchanting, adorable, funny ... Annabelle and Thatch deserve to join the Pusstheon of Literary cats .. alongside Dick Whittington's cat, the Cat in the Hat, Old Deuteronomy, le Chat Botté and other such famous felines.

As for the 140 publishers who rejected this gem in manuscript...  where do publishers find their readers these days?  Still cloning Barbara Taylor Bonker and John Crushem?

Congratulations Moreclacke Publishing and Robert Armin. You gave me my no1 book of 2024 (https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-best-broadway-book-in-decades.html) and now you come up with this one!  Put me on your notification list for coming ventures.

Read it to us, Daddy!

Why hav'n't you written a book about me?

"Don't chew that crucifix ..."  Oh dear, I feel chortles in my chest ..