But there are complications, including Lorna Sue's brother, Herbie, with whom she has an all-too-close relationship, and the considerable charms of Chippering's new love, the attractive, and of course already married, Mrs. Robert Kooshof, who may at last satisfy Chippering's longing for intimacy.
In Tomcat in Love, Tim O'Brien takes on the battle of the sexes with astonishing results. By turns hilarious, outrageous, romantic, and deeply moving, this is one of the most talked about novels in years: a novel for this and every age.
TIM O'BRIEN received the 1979 National Book Award in fiction for Going After Cacciato. His other works include the Pulitzer finalist and a New York Times Book of the Century, The Things They Carried; the acclaimed novels Tomcat in Love and Northern Lights; and the national bestselling memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone. His novel In the Lake of the Woods received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was named the best novel of 1994 by Time. In 2010 he received the Katherine Anne Porter Award for a distinguished lifetime body of work and in 2012 he received the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing in 2013.
"Tim O'Brien knows cold the spiraling insularity of obsession. . . . Thomas Chippering . . . is wickedly realized. The agility and intelligence that created this pathos-ridden romantic make one marvel at Tim O'Brien's gifts."
--Boston Sunday Globe
"A great American novel."
--Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"It's a plain fact; don't argue. Tim O'Brien can flat-out write. . . . Quirky and immensely satisfying. . . . After all the years of deadly serious writing, O'Brien has swung from the opposite side of the plate with Tomcat. He's hit a home run."
--Denver Post
"Wildly funny, accusingly poignant. . . . O'Brien has done a masterful job of depicting all those loose ends, those unmailed valentines, that final abiding question we have all . . . asked of the loved one who has left us behind."
--San Diego Union Tribune