#ive probably missed posting a bunch of these here this year

20 – BLITZCAT by Robert Westall
This is a really good one, mostly. The titular cat is essentially the framing device for a portmanteau of affecting stories of people’s lives in 1940 and ’41. Her journey to find her one true person brings her into the lives of various people from wartime widows to carters to a bomber crew… They’re all really good, with just the right balance of threat, thrills, adventure, tragedy, humour, and feline frolics.

I’m going to spoiler it a bit now, in two ways. First, if you’re anything like me, you might want to know in advance whether the cat lives or dies at the end, as is often the case with animal themed human interest stories, before really deciding whether to read it. So, spoiler, she survives for a happy ending. Secondly, between pages 181 and 220 or so, cat and book totally jump the shark, when the cat gets to go on raids over Germany, shoot down enemy planes, get shot down, and make her way home by means of resistance guides into Portugal. Seriously.

Now, cats have made long journeys home, bomber crews did illicitly take mascots with them, etc, but this whole sequence is much more rushed than the other stories, and feels tonally more like something the author was either pressured into doing, or that he got to it when a hard wordcount limit was getting close.

Overall, though, it’s a great read, just so well pitched and affecting, and I’m totally amazed there hasn’t been a movie or TV series. In fact I think this now becomes the one story that I’d more than anything love to find a way to become a film/TV maker to script and direct. But I’d have to either drop or extend, and certainly tweak, that pp181-220 section.