First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros -- Seven Lives and One great Love; Lena Divani

Every Tuesday I host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where I share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book I am reading or thinking about reading soon. Care to join us? Today's pick is one that won me over with the first (2) paragraphs ---

 

Seven Lives and One Great Love: 

the Memoirs of a Cat

Lena Divani - Europa - 2014

MOMMY DEAREST

" Though I run the risk of seeming disrespectful and ungrateful, I might as well confess it: I started planning my escape from the family home the moment I laid eyes on my progenitor.  That lady (for want of a better word) was an alley cat, ugly as can be, thin and sickly, with one good eye and molting fur the color of nondescript rubbish.  Darwin's shame.  A bottomless pit of aggression and fear. Cat lovers would woo her to try and feed her and she would launch into an attack.  A bellicose ingrate and rude to boot.  What business did I have with that?  The only smart choices she ever made were: a) to have sex with my father; and, b) to hunker down in a nook of the enormous garden of the corpulent, cat-loving Mrs. Sweetie, to give birth to us.

My father, whom unfortunately I never met but fortunately had sex appeal in spades, must have been of noble extraction, a pore-blooded Turk from Ankara, with a pedigree.  I am nevertheless prepared to bet he was all white, with a gleam in his eye, and a handsome devil.  What attracted him to that lowlife tramp, my mother, only the Lord knows.  In all likelihood, he was a bourgeois de salon who slipped out of his mansion one day, to see if he would make the grade out in the streets, had a run-in with the hood and realized how unforgiving street law can be.  There he was, my hapless progenitor, wallowing in self-pity, when mother turned up and restored his self-esteem.  Naturally, he was taken in by her street wise savvy, what mamma's boy wouldn't be?  Because, the truth be told, though mom may have been an eyesore, her street smarts were beyond reproach.  She happened to be in heat and deigned to allow him admission to the club of her many lovers, so she could add a blue blood to the random pool of genes she copped.  The outcome was me myself, as white as vanilla ice cream, a noble bastard, the four-legged exception in a mob of crooked, malformed and hideous siblings who stared at me mistrustfully. And smart to boot. Indeed, a genius."

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   

What do you think? Would you keep reading? Feel free to join us by linking your First Chapter post below ----