In Search of Cleo
How I Found My Kitty and Lost My Mind
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4.3 • 23 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A charming and funny memoir about experiences Gina Gershon has had with cats throughout her life that are analogous to her relationships with men and her ongoing search for true love.
Film and television icon Gina Gershon may be best known for her movie roles in Bound and Showgirls and television appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and How to Make It in America, but deep down she is a self-described cat lady. In Search of Cleo follows Gina’s desperation and despair when her assistant loses her beloved cat, Cleo. Gina spends two months roaming the back streets of Los Angeles at all hours of the night, searching for Cleo and meeting several quirky and outrageous characters who help or hinder her in different ways, including Ellen DeGeneres, who searches with Gina and recommends her pet psychic, Sonia; Arthur, the newspaper delivery man who gives her advice; and the mysterious fortune-teller, who appears from the shadows to give her a statue of Saint Gertrude, the protector of cats everywhere.
Gina soon finds herself enmeshed in L.A.’s strangest subcultures, doing everything she can to bring Cleo home, including chanting with a bunch of crystal-wielding hippies and being slapped with a chicken by a Santeria priest. Along the way, she reflects on the various cats that have been a part of her life and shares her travails as a single girl in search of both her cat and some sanity. In Search of Cleo will delight pet lovers and singletons alike as it introduces Cleo to the celebrated pantheon of literary cats that includes Dewey, Homer, and Oscar.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Actress Gershon's search for her missing cat, Cleo (lost because of her "hippy-dippy" assistant's mistake), is the subject of this spunky if half-baked memoir. The book combines Gershon's wacky efforts to find Cleo with scenes from her love life, and in both arenas, the actress marches to the beat of her own drum. To find her cat, she wakes up every day at 4:30 a.m., arms herself with "a can of tuna and a knife" and drives to West Hollywood to "yodel" a chant designed to lure Cleo home. She listens to the counsel of friends, an animal psychic named Sonia highly recommended by Ellen DeGeneres, and an enterprising man who calls her from jail volunteering to help after his release. Gershon peppers the cat-filled pages with other odd experiences. As a seven-year-old, she is harassed from a car by a naked, aroused man, and while in Hong Kong she has a one-night stand with a man she knows "without a doubt" is her husband from a past life. Gershon is a vigorous narrator and shares her most off-the-cuff thoughts (about Cleo, for example, she notes that "his meow is very gay"). While the hijinks are entertaining, the book as a whole never quite coalesces; the effort more closely resembles a moderately successful standup comedy routine.
Customer Reviews
So good!
Easy, fun read!
Very Surprise
Wow bought the audio and it was great. The music, cat meows ect.
Great job Gina. For all of those who needs someone to read their books on tape
she would be perrrrrfect.
WOW!
I will be recommending this book to everyone! I'm very particular about what I read-mainly because I have ADD and I rarely have time to read-but this book kept my interest and I made time to read it.... This story has a bit of everything in it... I'm very impressed and I sincerely hope the Miss Gershon will write another book in the future!