THE CUSSING CAT CLOCK (OR THE EULOGY OF PETE BURNS)

The Grime family cat, Pete Burns, is missing. But that’s not all that’s going wrong: Dru’s adoptive father has died, her brother Sammy won’t leave the house, and she recently received a letter from someone in her past that she doesn’t dare open. Yet. Not to mention: she didn’t even break a thousand on the SATs.

In the search for Pete Burns, Dru is forced to confront the obstacles and emotions she has been avoiding. With unbelievable verve and humor, E.P. Tuazon tackles the otherness that a first-generation immigrant can feel in an all-white family – and the togetherness that they can reclaim.

E. P. Tuazon’s “The Cussing Cat Clock” is a funny, sad, and often joyful meditation on the inner lives of teenagers and what it means to navigate an intensely white world as a Filipino adoptee. With Dru, our foul-mouthed guide, Tuazon has given us a narrator who could carry an entire novel with the sheer propulsion of her voice, and she’s accompanied by a cast of equally wry characters, including a woman who’s a magnet for neighborhood cats, an action-oriented best friend, and a verbal clock with a vocabulary that might be dirtier than hers. “The Cussing Cat Clock” showcases Tuazon’s talents for merging the strangeness of the world with the emotional impact of human connectivity—it’s a refreshing novella, and one worth spending an hour or two with.

~ Rebecca Rubenstein Senior Fiction Editor, The Rumpus

Fiction

Eric Tuazon

September 20, 2022

Paperback

978-1-7375703-2-5

$14