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Little Cat
"I don't know why it's so hard to write well about sex. . . . Few can pull it off, and I can't think of any who do it as intelligently, profoundly, and--let's face it, this matters--arousingly, as Tamara Faith Berger."--Sheila Heti, "The Globe and Mail""Little Cat "collects the first two troubling and titillating out-of-print novels by the acclaimed author of "Maidenhead." "Lie With Me "shows a young woman's promiscuity through the eyes of several lovers and, finally, her own. "The Way of the Whore" contemporizes the story of Mary of Egypt as young Mira is drawn deeper and deeper into the world of prostitution.Tamara Faith Berger is the author of three novels, including "Maidenhead." "Lie With Me "has been made into a film.
250 pages, ebook
First published April 19, 2013
23 people are currently reading
277 people want to read
About the author
Tamara Faith Berger
13 books47 followersTamara Faith Berger has published three novels: Lie With Me (2001), The Way of the Whore (2004) and Maidenhead (2012). Her first two novels were recently re-published as Little Cat (2013). She has been published in Taddle Creek, Adult and Apology magazine. Her work has been translated into Spanish and German. Tamara won the Believer Book Award for Maidenhead. She lives in Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 3, 2021
I saw the film adaptation of Lie with Me, which is one of the two novels in this book collection. The movie, an entry at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, depicts very graphic sexual scenes (and I read somewhere that the act had been done for real) and is about a nymphomaniac trying to draw the line between love and lust. The other novel in this book, The Way of the Whore, talks about a 15-year old girl who has experienced sex at a tender age and is trying to come to terms with her sexuality and relationship with men.
The two stories are brazenly honest; both try to delve into the psychology of female sexuality and appeal against slut-shaming, but they are not altogether insightful, thought-provoking, and necessary for me. This book is just one of those porn-needed fiction materials, as the author suggests, and is not really my cup of tea.
The two stories are brazenly honest; both try to delve into the psychology of female sexuality and appeal against slut-shaming, but they are not altogether insightful, thought-provoking, and necessary for me. This book is just one of those porn-needed fiction materials, as the author suggests, and is not really my cup of tea.
January 11, 2021
“I slid away like a snake from my home. Because what my parents thought about me was true. What your parents think about you is true! What your father thinks, what your mother thinks, all of it is perfectly true. Your body is helpless so far from the ground as you grow. You’re see-through and flimsy and if you don’t slide away, slither, then you’ll stay and you’ll lie and have your head filled with their shit.”
“I’ve felt all these things from what I’ve been doing. I mean, it was a whole other world in that place, in that club, everyone had different weight to their feet, everyone was heavier and we were all attached to each other. If someone was slimy, I had the same slime. It wasn’t the law of opposites attracting: the girls were like the girls and the slime was like the slime. It’s good to be a pig rolling in the slime sometimes, Ezrah. Because now I know what everyone pays for, now I know whose body pays more. I’ve been there trying to clean it all up. I have been trying to organize people’s unbearable needs because I see their unbearable forms. All I want is for things to be equal.”
“Sex is like soccer, says Deen. It’s fun and athletic, and you should do it with your friends.
It’s possible, though, that shame is essential for growing a spine. Maybe humans are just all mutations of shame.”
“I’ve felt all these things from what I’ve been doing. I mean, it was a whole other world in that place, in that club, everyone had different weight to their feet, everyone was heavier and we were all attached to each other. If someone was slimy, I had the same slime. It wasn’t the law of opposites attracting: the girls were like the girls and the slime was like the slime. It’s good to be a pig rolling in the slime sometimes, Ezrah. Because now I know what everyone pays for, now I know whose body pays more. I’ve been there trying to clean it all up. I have been trying to organize people’s unbearable needs because I see their unbearable forms. All I want is for things to be equal.”
“Sex is like soccer, says Deen. It’s fun and athletic, and you should do it with your friends.
It’s possible, though, that shame is essential for growing a spine. Maybe humans are just all mutations of shame.”
August 1, 2013
I read this book based on a review I read in the Globe and Mail (link is here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/b...) and after liking Maidenhead. This book is disturbing at times a hard read. In her afterword, the author says that 'porn needs a story' and I think that's what this book is.
November 16, 2020
I'm not sure what made me think that I should listen to books this graphic and disturbing as audiobooks. This was the opposite of comforting listening to accompany walks or household tasks. I should have saved these books to read to fuel feminist rage through written word. These two books, packaged together here, have something political to say about female sex, pornography, desire, prostitution, and the male gaze. But I couldn't quite get to the politics because I kept being distracted by the language and use of words being read aloud that I rarely hear spoken.
In short, don't listen to the audiobook of these. Read these books in print. As long as you want to read angry, pornographic, disturbing scenes.
In short, don't listen to the audiobook of these. Read these books in print. As long as you want to read angry, pornographic, disturbing scenes.
August 5, 2022
This is two books in one volume. Of them I enjoyed ‘Lie with me’ better and thought the novella better than the movie. It is refreshing to read about sex from a female perspective, to hear how it feels, how it is craved, when it is needed in her words. Some of Lie with Me is told from different males point of view and although it was an interesting device I enjoyed it most when coming from the main character.
‘The way of the whore’ had its moments and I enjoy the writing but I wasn’t as taken by the story as ‘Lie with Me’.
‘The way of the whore’ had its moments and I enjoy the writing but I wasn’t as taken by the story as ‘Lie with Me’.
December 30, 2022
These two early novels from Berger demonstrate her fearless commitment to literary sex and transcend mere erotica by the intensity and (in the second novel) smart observational details about prostitutes. This early work doesn't quite hit the heights of MAIDENHEAD and are more mood pieces than anything else. But there are few authors who so nimbly ride the fine line between erotica and literature like this.
August 27, 2021
I thoroughly enjoy erotica but I didn't get this book...
January 2, 2022
Honestly, I thought the majority of this book was sexy and well written for a book of its kind.
October 15, 2024
2 stories one book woot! I enjoyed reading both of them.
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September 27, 2025Flannel: Little Cat, Little Cat
June 27, 2022
What the hell did I just read? I don’t mind the graphic descriptions of sex but the whole thing was a giant car crash that I couldn’t stop looking at because I just wanted to get to the end
December 22, 2016
SEXUAL LANGUAGE, STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT 4 1/2 stars
This book holds two previously-published and unnoticed short novels, reworked a little. The first, "Lie with Me", begins as the first-person narrative of a young woman who repeatedly picks-up men for sex, especially fellatio; then turns to first-person accounts by men who she brings home to an increasingly dirty apartment for sex that becomes increasingly wild and scary (for the men). She has one longer relationship that breaks-down in sexual impasse.
This story deserves adjectives like searing, visceral, arousing, disgusting, and horrifying; reading it was a physical experience. It was also a thoughtful experience, thoughts about compulsion to repeat. Alice Miller, a German psychoanalyst, in The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self talks about the repetition of acts that are like a childhood trauma, for example, a person who was sexually-abused as a child going through a series of abusive relationships as an adult. She says these repetitions are an attempt to get the traumatic situation right, to come out on top, and so are an attempt to heal.
Another thought is (heterosexual) porn as radical objectification, destruction of the sujectivity of women. This story takes the trope from "Deep Throat", founding event of porn crossing into mainstream culture, and makes the woman actor, rather than acted on--attempting to gain and define her subjectivity. One of the male narratives takes another porn trope, a man with two women, and turns it inside-out by making the women the initiators and centers of the action, while the man experiences his own objectification, likes it, and is ultimately afraid of it.
There is no history for the woman in this story, and little or no reflection. She does have a project.
The second story, "The Way of the Whore", is a first-person narrative of a young, middle-class, Jewish-Canadian woman's initial attraction to prostitution, her introduction to it, and her journey of self-discovery as a prostitute. She puts herself in situations that put her life at risk, abandons family and friends, and falls in love with a pimp. On the surface this is not the usual path to wisdom, but the story follows elements of Joseph Campbell's myth of the hero's journey: The call to adventure; crossing the threshold; the cave; and the ordeal. The treasure, the wisdom, she finds, is ambiguous, but she does believe she has arrived somewhere
This book holds two previously-published and unnoticed short novels, reworked a little. The first, "Lie with Me", begins as the first-person narrative of a young woman who repeatedly picks-up men for sex, especially fellatio; then turns to first-person accounts by men who she brings home to an increasingly dirty apartment for sex that becomes increasingly wild and scary (for the men). She has one longer relationship that breaks-down in sexual impasse.
This story deserves adjectives like searing, visceral, arousing, disgusting, and horrifying; reading it was a physical experience. It was also a thoughtful experience, thoughts about compulsion to repeat. Alice Miller, a German psychoanalyst, in The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self talks about the repetition of acts that are like a childhood trauma, for example, a person who was sexually-abused as a child going through a series of abusive relationships as an adult. She says these repetitions are an attempt to get the traumatic situation right, to come out on top, and so are an attempt to heal.
Another thought is (heterosexual) porn as radical objectification, destruction of the sujectivity of women. This story takes the trope from "Deep Throat", founding event of porn crossing into mainstream culture, and makes the woman actor, rather than acted on--attempting to gain and define her subjectivity. One of the male narratives takes another porn trope, a man with two women, and turns it inside-out by making the women the initiators and centers of the action, while the man experiences his own objectification, likes it, and is ultimately afraid of it.
There is no history for the woman in this story, and little or no reflection. She does have a project.
The second story, "The Way of the Whore", is a first-person narrative of a young, middle-class, Jewish-Canadian woman's initial attraction to prostitution, her introduction to it, and her journey of self-discovery as a prostitute. She puts herself in situations that put her life at risk, abandons family and friends, and falls in love with a pimp. On the surface this is not the usual path to wisdom, but the story follows elements of Joseph Campbell's myth of the hero's journey: The call to adventure; crossing the threshold; the cave; and the ordeal. The treasure, the wisdom, she finds, is ambiguous, but she does believe she has arrived somewhere
July 25, 2016
Although I recall quite liking Maidenhead, neither of these stories rang true for me. They read like the first novels of a porn writer searching to make the connection to a deeper commentary on female sexuality (which, frankly, they are) but with a deeply nihilist perspective.
February 13, 2014
Read an excerpt on Joyland here: http://www.joylandmagazine.com/storie...
June 24, 2014
All thoughts are here: http://jacquelinevalencia.com/2014/06...
July 17, 2013
Excellent, disturbing, thought-provoking, necessary.
April 14, 2014
This collected edition of Faith-Berger's first two novels, edited and updated, is a difficult but worthwhile read.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews