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I and Claudius: Travels with My CatSnagging.org In association with Amazon.co.ukOnline Shop | Property Guides | Kitchen & Home | Garden Tools | Power Tools | Consumer Electronics Get the Snagging Checklist Here! Rating:  - Katherine Hepburn tours America with Dalai Lama of catsAnyone with first-class intelligence, real sensitivity and yet no fear of embarrassing themselves is half-way towards writing something remarkable. Clare de Vries more than meets her potential. This book is unique - and it's all about personality. Clare's. You may not always like it, but you sure as hell sit up when she walks into the room. If you are on this page and wondering whether or not to buy this book, stop pussyfooting around and get it. Take a punt. It's only on a book. De Vries did it with her life. Rating:  - a tired attempt at travel--writingOne of the worst travel-related pieces I've read. Driving alone, de Vries has no-one to play off against so in order to provide some dialogue, she makes constant references to conversations with her cat throughout the book. This is funny the first time but should be left as a one-off joke. De Vries flogs it until it's vaguely annoying to read. In addition to this, I would assume large tracts are fictitious: the very odd-coincidencies, the almost-slapstick moment where she knocks an important boss into a pool, the 'stay with people after knowing them 10 minutes' etc. I dont believe it happened that way, Clare! Rating: - Crushingly sad and ridiculously sillyI first heard about this book months before it was published - there was an article in The Guardian about how a young woman had taken her cat to travel around America after the death of her mother. Being a person who loves cats in all their contradictions, the idea fascinated me - so when I saw this book was out I had to read it. And I'm delighted to say that I was not disappointed. I found 'I and Claudius' startlingly original, painfully honest and at times, hilariously funny. Deeply introspective and sometimes almost embarrassingly honest, Clare describes her feelings about her life, her cat and her mother's death in a way in which you can't help but empathise. She is in a sense an anti-hero; there are times in the book where you don't particularly like her - when she appears vain and self-obsessed. However, as the pages unfolded I became quite fond of her, despite her flaws. She is human after all, like any of us - and the fact that she could reveal so much of herself and leave herself open to analysis and judgement by the reader, made me feel rather protective of her. Certainly her love for her cat is huge and the author uses her keen observational skills to combine tragedy and comedy with panache. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that I was dying of flu at the time that I read the last half of the book, but I found myself in floods of tears at the imminent demise of her beloved feline companion. 'I and Claudius' is by turns spiritual and sordid, crushingly sad and ridiculously silly. If you this is just another travelogue, you've missed the point. Rating: - Fantastically funny and entertaining travel bookA wonderful book - heart-warming and funny but at times very moving. I highly recommend it to everyone. I enjoyed it so much that I have now given it to three different friends all of whom have loved it. All in all a great read. Rating: - self-obsessed writer says nothing new about travelI was very much looking forward to reading this book, being a cat-loving, travel-loving sort of girl myself, but I was in for a big disappointment. The writer spends too much time describing her clothes,her cellulite and her angst, and not nearly enough on the stuff that would have made this an interesting read. She reveals herself to be a bit thick, especially when it comes to feline nutrition, (she feeds her cat Claudius things like chocolate, cheese and KFC, all well-documented as being bad for cats)and fails to make what appears to be an interesting premise (girl goes off alone across the States in search of, well, in search of something, after death of mother) into anything other than a litany of how many margaritas she has at each stop. By the end of the book I felt that she would have been better served by staying in London and spending all her money on booze and Gucci heels. I hope she felt better for writing this, but I certainly felt worse after reading it. Go back to: I and Claudius: Travels with My Cat You might also be interested in the following great products:
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