Cat Brushing: a dazzling short story collection about thirteen older women

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE
'Sensual, spiky, tender and utterly original' Pandora Sykes
'A fierce and fascinating debut' Lily King

I was told of an older woman who was asked by her granddaughter, 'Granny, when was the happiest time of your life?'
'I don't know,' she replied, 'I may not have had it yet.'

The stories found in this collection explore the worlds of thirteen older women, reframing their intellectual and emotional lives in intimate vignettes that will shock and comfort in equal measure. In elegant prose Jane Campbell ignites the voices of women who are fighting to live on their own terms, energised by the stuff of human living: a need for companionship, attachments to love-objects, freedoms, integrity and sense of self. Cat Brushing confronts the tragic misconceptions of ageing showing older women to be nothing less than courageous, fearless and defiant in the face of overwhelming odds.

Cat Brushing is a fierce and fascinating debut. I loved these women who have taken off their gloves to fight life with their bare hands.
I loved these fresh, wry, strange stories; by turns moving and unnerving, they disturb expectations of the longings, loves and ambitions of older women.

It's not every day . . . that you encounter a debut as fresh, assured and fun as Jane Campbell's . . . Though her stories are frequently explicit enough to bring colour to your cheeks, Campbell maintains a cool, commanding tone that enhances the effect of her limpid prose . . . The stories are varied in approach without being showy about it, and consistently draw novel insight from a few major themes: aging, sexuality, memory, loneliness. Her work merits comparison with that of Edna O'Brien or Muriel Spark, while an uncanny streak running through several of the pieces . . . might bring Daphne du Maurier to mind.
I laughed out loud in joy and admiration so many times in this original, surprising book. Cat Brushing is about aging, about sex, about the weirdness of technology, and about womanhood - these stories felt both deeply familiar to me and far too absent from many of our culture's stories. Jane Campbell is a refreshing, compelling new voice.
Jane Campbell is a wonder! It's her clear-eyed vision, rendered in prose as crisp as bone china, that had me rapt. This book flings open a heretofore shuttered window, giving us an invigoratingly fresh and absolutely essential view of the psychology and emotions and appetites of aging women. Jane Campbell, where have you been? We've needed you for a very, very long time.
Jane Campbell's Cat Brushing is the debut of the decade, an eighty year old woman laying out the physical and spiritual struggle of life at its very end. I was haunted by these stories of older women falling, having strokes, dying--subjects often flattened into sentimentality--but in Campbell's hands made both elegant and transgressive. We are striving creatures of intense desire, Campbell insists, until we are not.
In thirteen revivifying stories, thirteen candid, empathic portraits of aging women for whom desire yet smolders, Campbell proves aging is a complex sport. Some mental agility is required, some wit and wisdom. Befuddlement and remorse are a part of play, too, but the stories offer the solace of shared experience and company.
Stepping into these stories by Jane Campbell feels like opening a door back into the world. The thrust of life, of longing and regret, of contempt and forgiveness, it's all here in such vivid, delicious phrasing. She reads like Eudora Welty's wicked British cousin, a lot of fun.
Sensual, spiky, tender and utterly original short stories about the desire of women in their seventies and older.
Cat Brushing offers a much-needed fresh perspective on the diverse realities of ageing.
An illuminating, funny and tender collection that affirms wisdom and experience as the basis for great storytelling
Sensuous, strange and utterly original.