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Fancy
An elderly shut-in delivers a series of pet-sitting instructions to a young couple who’ve come to watch over his many, many cats. A story (or series of stories) about the ways that methodical, abstract systems interface with messy, personal obsessions, Fancy is a kissing cousin to the work of both the late Henry James and the early Thomas Bernhard: an object lesson in how our need to make sense of the world winds up devouring it whole.
- GenresCatsLiterary Fiction
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 20, 2014
I had the great pleasure of reading this in manuscript, and can't wait to buy and read a print copy. Jeremy M. Davies is one of the finest fiction writers currently working. Anyone who loved his first novel, ROSE ALLEY, will also love FANCY; the structure is ingenious, and every sentence is a delight. (Anyone who hasn't read ROSE ALLEY is, to steal a line from Pablo Neruda, doomed.) Both RA and FANCY have become part of the architecture of my mind.
September 26, 2024
Metaphysical comedy about small-town cat fanciers. Rumrill is interviewing a pair of potential cat-sitters, which entails spieling at them for two hundred plus pages about his former employment at the library, his hookups therein, and the exiled Austrian watchmaker Brocklebank who hired him to act as scribe. If you take seriously the idea that modern fiction should to some degree be a comment on the challenges of its own composition, then Rumrill’s struggle to overcome and yet embrace the Austrian’s “system” (a largely incoherent assemblage of poetic aphorisms regarding cat-fancying) *must* be a stand-in for Davies’ own struggle to appropriate and transcend the perspicuous influence of Thomas Bernhard. There’s also a lot of Nicholson Baker in here I reckon. Great stuff although the rigid paragraph structuring does get a little tiresome.
October 25, 2016
"He added: And I picture her, if not interested, then listening with civil reserve."
May 3, 2016
Review initially published on my blog, Writing by Numbers, here.
Perhaps when you were a child you had an elderly relative whose home you were obliged to visit. There you’d perch on the plastic-covered couch. You were offered a cellophane-wrapped sweet. Your relative and your parents would talk, and talk, and occasionally something would be funny or odd or slightly inappropriate and they’d all laugh.
Davies has written the novel version of just such an experience. A thankfully compact work, Fancy is a monologue delivered by compulsive hermit Rumrill. For some reason, Rumrill needs cat-sitters. He has invited a young couple to apply for the position, and he holds a one-sided novel-length conversation with these unfortunate folks to instruct them on his house’s routines, his cat-sitting expectations, and the life experiences and musings that formed them. There are lots of ten-dollar words. There are lots of Rumrill’s sly inside jokes.
Rumrill is not a wholly tedious narrator. He just requires patience, and careful attention to catch when he is being witty or insightful. If you want instant gratification – something Rumrill himself disdains – go elsewhere. If you’re willing to sit through the equivalent of a long, old-fashioned slideshow, you’ll gain a deeply philosophical meditation on how routines construct consciousness, the role of spatiality and memory in our lives, and abstraction of the self.
The 215 in 2015 series chronicles every book I read in 2015. Each review contains exactly 215 words. For more, visit http://www.ararebit.wordpress.com.
Perhaps when you were a child you had an elderly relative whose home you were obliged to visit. There you’d perch on the plastic-covered couch. You were offered a cellophane-wrapped sweet. Your relative and your parents would talk, and talk, and occasionally something would be funny or odd or slightly inappropriate and they’d all laugh.
Davies has written the novel version of just such an experience. A thankfully compact work, Fancy is a monologue delivered by compulsive hermit Rumrill. For some reason, Rumrill needs cat-sitters. He has invited a young couple to apply for the position, and he holds a one-sided novel-length conversation with these unfortunate folks to instruct them on his house’s routines, his cat-sitting expectations, and the life experiences and musings that formed them. There are lots of ten-dollar words. There are lots of Rumrill’s sly inside jokes.
Rumrill is not a wholly tedious narrator. He just requires patience, and careful attention to catch when he is being witty or insightful. If you want instant gratification – something Rumrill himself disdains – go elsewhere. If you’re willing to sit through the equivalent of a long, old-fashioned slideshow, you’ll gain a deeply philosophical meditation on how routines construct consciousness, the role of spatiality and memory in our lives, and abstraction of the self.
The 215 in 2015 series chronicles every book I read in 2015. Each review contains exactly 215 words. For more, visit http://www.ararebit.wordpress.com.
March 21, 2015
It took me a while-- maybe a hundred pages, which meant sitting down with this book repeatedly for about a week, before I could get into this book, more or less a monologue from a very talkative guy who is trying to determine if a couple is the right people to house sit his cats. Of course, it's about much more than that-- the monolgue playfully loops around to the purpose of the cats, as a monitor of the reality of the house where the monologuist lives, and the story of how he comes to have twenty cats, a dimunition of the thirty cats his former boss had, when he himself was employed as a cat sitter.
And etc. Really, the whole book is an unbroken monologue, except that Rumrill interrupts himself, and eventually, we get inserts from the book Brockleback, his former employer-mentor wrote about cat fancying. It takes some patience to read, because you don't get any obvious breaks, but it is fun, as we loop through a couple nestled narratives-- the death of Brockleback, the pre-cat siting career of Rumrill at a library, etc. There's a lot of wit here, most of it happening on the level of philosophy, as Rumrill tries to prove the world exists when he is not there, etc.
There's a weird section at the end, called "Sources." I was thrown when I first read this but after sleeping on it, I'm gong to make the leap and say the "sources" provide the section of Brockleback's book on the proper way to fancy cats.... Which then, I think, recasts this book as a love letter from Davies to the people who inspired him, as Rumrill works through his own relationship to Brockleback. I'm not good enough at spotting quotes to know if this is true, but it feels right to me.
And etc. Really, the whole book is an unbroken monologue, except that Rumrill interrupts himself, and eventually, we get inserts from the book Brockleback, his former employer-mentor wrote about cat fancying. It takes some patience to read, because you don't get any obvious breaks, but it is fun, as we loop through a couple nestled narratives-- the death of Brockleback, the pre-cat siting career of Rumrill at a library, etc. There's a lot of wit here, most of it happening on the level of philosophy, as Rumrill tries to prove the world exists when he is not there, etc.
There's a weird section at the end, called "Sources." I was thrown when I first read this but after sleeping on it, I'm gong to make the leap and say the "sources" provide the section of Brockleback's book on the proper way to fancy cats.... Which then, I think, recasts this book as a love letter from Davies to the people who inspired him, as Rumrill works through his own relationship to Brockleback. I'm not good enough at spotting quotes to know if this is true, but it feels right to me.
March 30, 2015
engaged w/ it here: http://www.5cense.com/15/424.htm
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews