The Last Rain

The Cat

Penguin Canada


I really loved The Cat. I plan to spread word of this book in as many ways as possible. My congratulations to Edeet Ravel.
- Anne Tyler

In her evocation of grief, and the terrible loneliness of grief that is unfathomable to those who stand at a little distance from it, Edeet Ravel is utterly, heartbreakingly convincing. And in her rendering of the idiosyuncratic nature of grief, that strikes each of us differently, she is poignant and compelling.
- Joyce Carol Oates

....The textured play of the mind and senses and attempt to control time are indicative of Ravel's style. In addition, the disquieting calm of the heroine's voice enfolds us in her grief. Elise refuses to deal with her son's body. Instead she leaves an angry note for her ex-husband informing him of their child's death and instructing him to handle the situation. Back home she promptly disconnects the phone. She prepares to disconnect literally from life, when she remembers: The cat. She must stay alive to care for her sons beloved Pursie

... But this is not a novel about how a painful loss illuminates the past. Each day is a drug-induced haze alleviated by spikes of anguish. Elise loses her son over and over again: on the first day of school; on the first snowfall; on the first birthday after his death. This could be a maudlin read but for Elise herself, who never turns off her inquiring mind. People have grieved from time immemorial, she surmises, and still there is no cure. Art proves inadequate. She is outraged when the bereavement counsellor offers her some books ... As an author, Ravel proves herself something of a naturalist, representing her characters as higher animals that are overwhelmingly shaped by their heredity and environment ... I responded to Elise as an actual enigmatic acquaintance; an individual that grew on me over time.
- Donna Bailey Nurse, National Post, Toronto