‘Magnificat,’ by best-selling author of The Cats of Moon Cottage, Marilyn Edwards, is an absolute joy to read. I was hooked from page one and suffered withdrawal symptoms when I finished the book. This is a real page-turner and I loved the flow of the story line which gripped me from the beginning.
Ben is a troubled and troublesome young boy living with his mother. He has an absentee father and to make up for the lack of a relationship with him, he desperately wants a dog. His best friends, twins, Chloe and Josh, have the ebullient and effusive ‘Clueless’ a faithful dog that Ben loves to spend time with, but when his mother finds that he has used her credit card for a ‘cyber dog’ on line, he gets into real trouble.
There is a strong resonance of anger, resentment, rebellion all rising to the surface in Ben’s head and his relationship with his mother slowly falls apart.
Magnificat is a stray cat living on her wits and somehow, living on the mean streets, she manages to find her way to the presbytery where a kind priest, Father John-Henry, takes her in and feeds her. By a string of coincidences Chloe and Ben find themselves at the church and Magnificat sees Ben and knows that he is the boy for her.
Ben is less certain. You can’t do anything with a cat, can you? But over time, Ben comes to realise that Magnificat is the cat for him. When she goes missing for several months Ben, with the help of Father John-Henry, Chloe and Josh, pull out all the stops to try and find her again.
This really is a gripping story. The reader will root for Ben and Magnificat alike and without giving away the end of the story, I will just say that I shed tears – of sadness and joy – at Marilyn’s marvellous story-writing expertise.
Marilyn has encompassed her considerable knowledge of wildlife and the countryside, not to mention her vast experience with cat behaviour, to make this book one fantastic read. The reader is taken on a journey and from beginning to end, you have no idea how it will pan out.
As always, there are lessons to learn along the way. ‘… this dear, beautiful, beloved cat had taught Ben so much. She had taught him gallantry and tenacity and loyalty and honesty and the importance of being true to oneself. She had even taught him of the existence of angels – or magic – or maybe just how to be brave. And more than all of these things she had shown him how to love and to be loved, a gift so great that it had spilled over into the rest of his life so that he was now able to reach out and properly give his love to others and, yes, to allow them to love him back.’ (page 218)
Those of us who are blessed, and have been blessed, to share our lives, our homes, and our hearts, with cats, know that they teach us far more about ourselves than we could ever teach them. And we are always the richer for our experience of having our own ‘Magnificat’ in our lives.
Thank you Marilyn, for what has been for me, the best read of the year so far.
This book, published by Catnip Publishing (www.catnippublishing.co.uk) is beautifully illustrated by France Baudin and is available in paperback.
The ISBN number is: 978-1-846-47147-6
For more information about Marilyn please see ‘Interview with Marilyn’
To visit Marilyn’s website please click on this link:
A Morning Kiss
A morning kiss, a discreet touch of his nose landing somewhere on the middle of my face.
Because his long white whiskers tickled, I began every day laughing.
Janet F Faure
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