Varjak Paw

Varjak Paw by SF Said
David Fickling Books - 2003
255 pages

Mesopotamian Blue cat Varjak Paw has never been Outside before: he and his family have always lived in the isolated house at the top of the hill. But Varjak is forced out of the city when the sinister Gentleman and his two menacing cats take over his home. With help from his mystical ancestor, Jalal, Varjak manages to overcome challenges such as self-survival and a threat from menacing gangland cats, and he ultimately discovers the terrifying secrets behind the Vanishings. But can he save his own family from their fate?

(Spoiler rate: Moderate)

I literally read this book in about an hour and a half. I was watching a rerun of Best Week Ever early in the morning when there was an outage and I was left with nothing to do. That's when I saw that the next book on my list was Varjak Paw. Naturally, I picked it up and began reading. With 255 pages, big font, and pictures, it didn't take me very long. To put it simply, for someone older, this is definitely a library read (meaning, of course, that it's so short it's not worth owning.)

The characters are rather highly developed to the point where you greatly care about them. My favorites were Holly and Tam, two female cats that Varjak meets on his journeys. Ginger and Sally Bones are less well-developed, but the stories behind them are rather rich.

Sometimes there is repetition of details as if we are being presented with it the first time. I can only assume that this is a result of editing, where something was introduced in one chapter and the chapter before that was changed to include this piece, but the chapter afterwards was never fixed. I've always been careful to make sure that there's no repetition in my works. As an example, we are presented with the fact that Holly's eyes are the color of mustard in one chapter and then the next as if it is new.

And then there's the deus ex machina at the end. Varjak is sent out by the Elder Paw, his grandfather, to find a dog to save his family from the Gentlemen. The problem is that there's no way for the dog, Cludge, to come up, because he can't climb and there's something about how the house is structured that the dog can't jump. So Varjak is fighting the Gentleman and his two cats on his own and you think that he's about to use the skills that Jalal taught him to kill the Gentleman.

Nope.

Cludge wants to climb for his friend Varjak, so he learns how to climb and comes up in just the nick of time to kill the Gentleman. What the what?!? Dogs don't just learn how to climb in ten minutes because they feel bad about letting their friends down!

Up until that point, I was feeling pretty good about Varjak Paw. Oh well.

Grade: B