Other Books

The New Statesman, which each year asks writers and guests to select a favorite read from the preceding 12 months, published their 2024 selections last week, and My Beloved Monster was among those picked. To justify the choice, John Gray wrote:

Caleb Carr’s My Beloved Monster (Allen Lane), an account of the life he shared for 17 years with a Siberian forest cat, is a profound story of mortality, grief and love. Left to die in a locked apartment, Masha was found by Carr in an animal sanctuary, where she adopted him as much as he adopted her. Abused as a child by his violent father and suffering poor health for the rest of his life, he formed a more enduring relationship with her than with any human being. While he was writing in the remote farmhouse they shared in upstate New York, she was “hunting and defending our territory” and comforting him in his illnesses. When she died of cancer Carr was desolated, and died himself, also from cancer, not long after. My Beloved Monster will be compared with JR Ackerley’s classic My Dog Tulip (1956), but to my mind Carr tells a more extraordinary tale. Unlike Ackerley’s Alsatian, Masha remained untamed, befriending an ailing human without ever giving up her wild nature.

The selection coincided with the UK release of My Beloved Monster in late October by Allen Lane. Already a New York Times bestseller from its earlier US publication in April, it has garnered lovely reviews from across the Atlantic as well.

Reviewing for The Times, Francesca Angelini called the memoir “a warm, heavy love letter to Masha and her feline predecessors,” while Kathryn Hughes, reviewing for The Guardian, described the memoir as “one of the finest meditations on animal companionship that I have ever read.” Hughes explained:

In this exquisite book novelist Caleb Carr tells the story of the “shared existence” he enjoyed for 17 years with his beloved cat, Masha. At the time of writing she is gone, he is going, and all that remains is to explain how they made each other’s difficult lives bearable. The result is not just a lyrical double biography of man and cat but a wider philosophical inquiry into our moral failures towards a species which, cute internet memes notwithstanding, continues to get a raw deal.

For those who may have missed them, you can find Caleb Carr’s interviews about My Beloved Monster given late last year here.

And if you have not yet met the remarkable Masha, like the reviewers above I recommend giving Caleb’s final, heartfelt memoir a try. Whether you are a cat aficionado or not, My Beloved Monster is a moving tribute to both Masha and her human companion of 17 years, and provides a glimpse the kind of deeply loving relationship possible between feline and human, if only more humans would give them a chance to come that close.

Several new interviews and reviews have been released in the lead up to the publication of Caleb Carr’s new memoir My Beloved Monster on April 16. Perhaps most revealing was a pre-recorded interview Caleb gave to CBS Saturday Morning, offering in-depth insight into the writing of the memoir and his special relationship with Masha, along with sobering news about the current state of his health. The segment can be viewed below:

In addition, he gave an interview with Scott Simon on NPR about the memoir that you can read the transcript of or listen to here.

The book has also garnered several wonderful reviews. Chris Bohjalian in the Washington Post described the book as a “warm, wrenching love story,” concluding:

Like all good memoirs — and this is an excellent one — “My Beloved Monster” is not always for the faint of heart. Because life is not for the faint of heart. But it is worth the emotional investment, and the tissues you will need by the end, to spend time with a writer and cat duo as extraordinary as Masha and Carr.

Alexandra Jacobs of The New York Times similarly framed the memoir as “loving and lovely, lay-it-all-on-the-line explication of one man’s fierce attachment,” while a Booklist review called it “a love story of the best, most ethereal kind.” Publisher’s Weekly also praised the book as “lively and moving….even readers without their own furry friend will be moved.”

Caleb said in the CBS interview that for the latter years of Masha’s life, he would look at her and say, “Some day, I’m going to make you famous.” With My Beloved Monster currently trending #1 in memoirs and author biographies on Amazon, it certainly looks as though his promise is coming true. I’m sure many of Caleb’s loyal readers will be looking forward to meeting Masha and learning about the bond she and Caleb shared when the memoir is released on Tuesday — and, of course, wish him peace and strength as he fights his current health battle.