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A review by cornerofmadness
Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
2.0
Let me preface my review with I don’t usually read memoirs, inspiring animal stories or non-fiction that’s not either educational or true crime. I bought this for my sister in law and figured I’d read it before slapping on the holiday wrapping paper.
The story starts out with Gwen being a 20 something underemployed young lady working for charity organizations when her vet calls her about a tiny kitten who had to have his eyes removed because of an infection. Homer had a rough start in life but he made an amazing recovery. I absolutely loved whenever the story revolved around Homer and her other two cats, Vashti and Scarlett. Stories of all the things Homer did were just heart warming and astounding.
The first half of the books is mostly about their life in Miami and how Homer astounds his human companions. About half way through Gwen moves to NYC and the story shifts more to her life influenced by Homer and I’ll be honest, I lost all interest. I love Homer. I do not like Gwen much. I honestly found her judgmental, controlling (she even admits in her narrative that her friends accuse her of this), whining and self centered. Example in her own words “I always found the quality of being interested in me one of the most interesting qualities a man could possess.” She’s angry that a whole flight of people are angry that her cats howled the whole flight. She calls a man she was dating disgusting when he tried to explain he has trust issues after growing up with an alcoholic father (granted there may be more to this than is in the book but as presented… and i'm NOT saying she shouldn't be mad or that she should have dated this guy but to call someone with childhood trauma disgusting because it affected their behavior shows a total lack of understanding of what this does to a person), even her original roommate comes off in such a way that I’d be pretty angry about it if I were this girl.
So I came away from this book with mixed feelings. There were whole chapters I skimmed since Gwen was busy me me me-ing it with hardly any mentions of Homer but the first half of the book is all about him and Homer is endearing to the point where he gets sick much later in the book, I was afraid to turn the pages, fearing he might not make it. I think, if you like inspiring animal stories you will really like this one.
The story starts out with Gwen being a 20 something underemployed young lady working for charity organizations when her vet calls her about a tiny kitten who had to have his eyes removed because of an infection. Homer had a rough start in life but he made an amazing recovery. I absolutely loved whenever the story revolved around Homer and her other two cats, Vashti and Scarlett. Stories of all the things Homer did were just heart warming and astounding.
The first half of the books is mostly about their life in Miami and how Homer astounds his human companions. About half way through Gwen moves to NYC and the story shifts more to her life influenced by Homer and I’ll be honest, I lost all interest. I love Homer. I do not like Gwen much. I honestly found her judgmental, controlling (she even admits in her narrative that her friends accuse her of this), whining and self centered. Example in her own words “I always found the quality of being interested in me one of the most interesting qualities a man could possess.” She’s angry that a whole flight of people are angry that her cats howled the whole flight. She calls a man she was dating disgusting when he tried to explain he has trust issues after growing up with an alcoholic father (granted there may be more to this than is in the book but as presented… and i'm NOT saying she shouldn't be mad or that she should have dated this guy but to call someone with childhood trauma disgusting because it affected their behavior shows a total lack of understanding of what this does to a person), even her original roommate comes off in such a way that I’d be pretty angry about it if I were this girl.
So I came away from this book with mixed feelings. There were whole chapters I skimmed since Gwen was busy me me me-ing it with hardly any mentions of Homer but the first half of the book is all about him and Homer is endearing to the point where he gets sick much later in the book, I was afraid to turn the pages, fearing he might not make it. I think, if you like inspiring animal stories you will really like this one.