Soothing Music for Stray Cats by Jayne Joso

I think the black and white cover is quite stylish and suits the general atmosphere of the novel. The cover text does a good job of summarising the plot and accurately reflects the content of the novel.

The cover would attract me to take a look at this book, but I don’t think the text would particularly attract me to buy it., simply because I’m not that interested in the novel’s themes. The novel is written in the first person, through the eyes of Mark Kerr, a thirty-something ‘everyman’ who has gone ‘A.W.O.L.’ from his life, job and relationship following the suicide of his boyhood best friend Jim. The novel deals with Mark’s guilt at losing touch with his Jim about 18 years previously.
I think the novel succeeds in portraying Mark’s emotional breakdown, and I got a sense of how such a crisis can build up over a long time – in that sense the novel was very real and had a depth and authenticity for me. However I found I just didn’t care that much, I didn’t feel that I knew who Mark was, nor did I know anything about him that would make me care.
I really didn’t like the voice of Mark as it was written down, I found it very mannered, and it was difficult to get beyond this. I wouldn’t recommend this book to a friend. I can see that it is a well written book, but I just didn’t get on with it. I suppose it is quite a personal book, and the book and I suffered from a personality clash.

Louise Bristow

“I’d made a pretty major move… but I bet there isn’t anyone on this planet that hasn’t, at some point, just wanted to stop the world a while, and step off…”

Things aren’t going too well for Mark. His once-best friend has just jumped from a 20th floor window, and he realises that he too is misfiring his way through “the wrong life”. Listing in the wake of his old pal’s funeral, he turns to chain-smoking and tearing up beer-mats as a way of covering up the cracks, the silences, the fact that he’s not on the property ladder yet. But it’s not enough. What follows is a weird and wonderful ride of sing-alongs, “top sounds” and finding soulmates on public transport.

Somehow Mark finds himself house-sitting for a sleazeball acquaintance from way back when, from a place where people stay ‘long-lost’ for a reason. Floating on autopilot around an alienating London, Mark is surrounded by the great achievements of others, from Lord Nelson and Dame Ellen MacArthur to his scurrilous Easy Street neighbours. But this isn’t a book about individual success. Instead it’s about finding consolation and solidarity in the strangest of places. There’s a spirited gang of lads who find safety staying out on the streets all night, a loveable corner-shop owner, and a Japanese international student with desires on self-destruction.

What I liked about the novel is the way it balances life’s little niggles – direct debits, shocking music collections, the North-South divide – with the bigger questions. It reads like an urban fantasia: one of unexpected fairy-godmothers, where random acts of kindness interlink with meditations on mortality, and Samurai teachings meet floodlit cricket in the park. And it’s not afraid of painting in darker tones, either.

There’s a meandering, fantastical element to Mark’s thought-patterns: from a Friday night search for Mr. Benn on the Piccadilly Line to the idea of the entire Philharmonic Orchestra on a fishing trip. These child-like enthusiasms lend a warmth to our often self-deprecating narrator, those of a daydreamer up against a nightmarish real world.

It’s a loopy rough-book stream-of-consciousness scribble through the world, through music, through writing, just trying to make sense of it all. And it’s definitely worth the read.

James Hogg