Baby Cat-Face

by Barry Gifford

From the author of Wild at Heart, a “wild, wacky, funny, well-written, and surreal” novel (Kansas City Star) about a woman struggling to make her way in “a New Orleans so feverishly peculiar that Anne Rice would feel at ease there” (Washington Post).

Genres: Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Barry Gifford is an American author, poet, and screenwriter known for his distinctive mix of American landscapes and film noir- and Beat Generation-influenced literary madness.

He is described by Patrick Beach as being "like if John Updike had an evil twin that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and wrote funny..."He is best known for his series of novels about Sailor and Lula, two sex-driven, star-crossed protagonists on the road. The first of the series, Wild at Heart, was adapted by director David Lynch for the 1990 film of the same title. Gifford went on to write the screenplay for Lost Highway with Lynch. Much of Gifford's work is nonfiction.

Reviews

[Christopher Staley]

I picked this book up off a library shelf, knowing nothing about it or the author, and it completely inverted my toupee.

A fast read, funny. One of my all-time favorite reads, although this is partially due to the surprise factor ... like when I was 8 or so, flipping through the Tv dial, and thought I'd found an old cop show, but it turned out to be the beginning of Psycho.

[Mike Russell]

Wonderful, succinct, surprising, humane, funny...

Here is a good documentary by the author for anyone interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQPqp...

[Norris Rettiger]

At the end of this one someone asks, “why the hell did god make so many bad people?” The answer has to be at least partly so Barry Gifford could write about them. Phenomenal conclusion-y book of the trilogy, though it definitely leads you right into Sailor and Lula, which means another 8 books. But Sailor and Lula is a come-when-may type of series, meandering and a bit restless. Southern Nights is just something like 450 pages of driving a slick car at the speed of a dead-end free fall.

[Jared Estes]

Barry Gifford is a surrealist author of sorts and this is one of his best books. Gifford's different characters and their stories often intertwine throughout books and this makes them fun to read, knowing a character may reappear at any time in another book.

Most of his books take place in New Orleans or any other closely related cajun and southern location. His characters are fast and are living on the edge. These are the people that surround us every day, real people, they may not be pretty and you may not like them but you will have fun reading about them. Gifford's work reaches out to the human race and attempts to bring all of our natural emotions to the surface. Gifford creates that sort of tension in his books, while creating joy, happiness, love, confidence and robustness. This along with Arise and Walk are his best books.

[Kristy]

Baby Cat-Face was just as wonderfully weird and fun as I've come to expect Barry Gifford to be. This features a bit of a pre-Wild at Heart Sailor and Lula, but mostly focuses on the New Orleans adventures of the titular Baby, her friends and lovers, and her unusual religious experiences at Mother Bizco's Temple of the Few Washed Pure by Her Blood. At least one name or phrase on every page is amazing enough to want to read aloud to someone else in the room (which probably irritated my husband), including: the Evening in Seville Bar on Lesseps Street, Waldo Orchid, Jewel Wasp, and Daylight DuRapeu.

[Mel]

I still loved this book but I felt the ending of this story did not make a whole lot of sense and for that I have to deduct one star. Of course Barry Gifford books are almost always a fun read.

[Vanessa]

this book had me in tears. hilarious and magical.

[emma]

I loved this book for about the first 100 pages..... but then it got weirder and weirder and the ending was going in several directions at once. I deducted one star for that reason.

[KP]

One of the weirdest books I have ever read.

[David]

Most memorable phrase, "unlawfully dismembered"

[Neville Tirimba Ogoti]

Nasomete egetabu eke emiaka 8 gose 9 yaetire kinde esekondari. Nanyorete egetabu eke kebwate amang'ana y'ogokumi bori. Nkengogeti mono.

[AC]

Not as interesting or as smooth.

[Joey Og]

exelent...

[Stavo]

Es un libro muy bien escrito, y Baby Cat-face es un personaje súper bien construido.
Al final, mi calificación es gracias a que el libro me parece un poco aburrido, y no muy memorable.