New mother, aspiring writer, and former shopgirl Leanne has lost her way. As she struggles with both her grief and the haze of motherhood, it also becomes clear that her best friend, the default queen of East Side Los Angeles, Regina Mark, might not actually be a friend at all. As Leanne begins to investigate and undermine Regina, she also strikes up an unexpected friendship with the lauded writer Maxine Hunter. Feeling frustrated and invisible next to Regina's wealth and social standing, Leanne seeks security wherever she can find it.
The thing I was prepared to like least about Amelia Morris’s funny and engrossing debut novel — new motherhood and all the requisite growing pains — ultimately became the thing I admired about it most ... I have been known to ask friends what, if anything, they like about having kids. Leanne Hazelton, the narrator of Wildcat, answered that question for me in tender, often quotidian ways ... The more powerful parts of the story come from Morris’s witty observations ... There are also poignant epiphanies about family, which occur via a truce with her Republican physician mother and a severing of ties with her father’s embittered widow. I reread that chapter several times, feeling as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me, and suspecting I wasn’t reading fiction at all ... Wildcat was a book I couldn’t set down for long.
In this sly and funny commentary on the institution of motherhood, Morris...delivers a compulsively readable product. With short chapters and buttery-smooth prose, it’s also an exploration of the ebbs and flows of female friendship and how people can betray each other in microscopic ways.
Sparkling ... Perfectly captures the false intimacy of social media and how confusing its connections can be, an ambience intensified by Morris’s arresting, concise observations ... These zany episodes yield great drama.
