2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino

Please, sit back, relax and get comfortable while I wax on about how absolutely beautiful and brilliant and masterful and gorgeous and amazing this book was. You ready? Here it comes.

2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas has become one of my new ultimate favourites of all time. (Bet you didn't see that coming.) Bertino uses an almost poetic style in the telling of this tale, which spans 24 hours, beginning on Christmas Eve Eve. (It is not a Christmas story, so you don't have to worry about scheduling it in in six months.)

There is no protagonist in the book. It follows a selected group of people who sometimes are connected to each other, or not, throughout the day. (At this point, I feel obliged to recommend that you do not read the synopsis on Goodreads, as it is off-putting.) Some of these people are fairly nice. Some of them are fairly unpleasant. But that is life really, not so? What I found extraordinary was that she had me rooting for an unpleasant person, and hoping with everything I had while reading, that everything would turn out all right. That alone, I think, marks a great writer, because I could see the humanity behind this character, see beyond the faults, and forgive the character for them. Bertino made the character completely real to me.

The Cat's Pajamas is a jazz club. Perhaps that accounts for the style in which this was written. I have not read anything else by Bertino, (I hope to rectify that by getting my hands on a copy of her short story collection - the only other thing she has had published) so I cannot with all honesty say whether she writes like this all the time, or whether it was to capture the free-spirited flow of jazz. Either way, I will not be disappointed. I really found the way this was written soothing. It is an odd choice of words, but it is true. The words flowed and I absorbed them, and I was happy.

I think that, if you are the type of reader who is up for a more arty book (as opposed to the regular blah, blah narrative tale), who is open to a story that does not focus on one character but a handful, who would like to read something that feels different to other books, or who would like to see some effortless characterisation, then this could be the book for you. If that doesn't sound like you, then perhaps you should skip this one.

2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas is the 38th book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.
I gave this, predictably, 5 stars on Goodreads. It was amazing! I read it in one night!