In Search of Cleo: How I Found My Pussy and Lost My Mind

by Gina Gershon Narrated by Gina Gershon

Overview

Film and television icon Gina Gershon may be best known for her movie roles in Bound and Showgirls and television appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and How to Make It in America, but deep down she is a self-described cat lady. In Search of Cleo follows Gina's desperation and despair when her assistant loses her beloved cat, Cleo. Gina spends two months roaming the back streets of Los Angeles at all hours of the night, searching for Cleo and meeting several quirky and outrageous characters who help or hinder her in different ways, including Ellen DeGeneres, who searches with Gina and recommends her pet psychic, Sonia; Arthur, the newspaper delivery man who gives her advice; and the mysterious fortuneteller, who appears from the shadows to give her a statue of Saint Gertrude, the protector of cats everywhere.

Gina soon finds herself enmeshed in LA's strangest subcultures, doing everything she can to bring Cleo home, including chanting with a bunch of crystal-wielding hippies and being slapped with a chicken by a Santeria priest. Along the way, she reflects on the various cats that have been a part of her life and shares her travails as a single girl in search of both her cat and some sanity.

In Search of Cleo will delight pet lovers and singletons alike as it introduces Cleo to the celebrated pantheon of literary cats that includes Dewey, Homer, and Oscar.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Actress Gershon’s search for her missing cat, Cleo (lost because of her “hippy-dippy” assistant’s mistake), is the subject of this spunky if half-baked memoir. The book combines Gershon’s wacky efforts to find Cleo with scenes from her love life, and in both arenas, the actress marches to the beat of her own drum. To find her cat, she wakes up every day at 4:30 a.m., arms herself with “a can of tuna and a knife” and drives to West Hollywood to “yodel” a chant designed to lure Cleo home. She listens to the counsel of friends, an animal psychic named Sonia highly recommended by Ellen DeGeneres, and an enterprising man who calls her from jail volunteering to help after his release. Gershon peppers the cat-filled pages with other odd experiences. As a seven-year-old, she is harassed from a car by a naked, aroused man, and while in Hong Kong she has a one-night stand with a man she knows “without a doubt” is her husband from a past life. Gershon is a vigorous narrator and shares her most off-the-cuff thoughts (about Cleo, for example, she notes that “his meow is very gay”). While the hijinks are entertaining, the book as a whole never quite coalesces; the effort more closely resembles a moderately successful standup comedy routine. Agent: David Kuhn, Kuhn Projects. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

Equal parts adventure story, heartwarming memoir, and gritty L.A. noir, In Search of Cleo is the unforgettable tale of one woman's quest to find and reclaim the feline she loves. Laugh, cry, and prowl the darkened alleys of Tinseltown alongside Gershon through the pages of this book. Cat lovers everywhere will be glad they took the trip.”
Gwen Cooper, author of the New York Times bestseller Homer's Odyssey

“[A] charmingly quirky memoir…The lengths she goes to in her efforts to recover Cleo will definitely strike a chord with animal lovers.”
Booklist

“Gershon thoughtfully weaves the wacky cat-finding stories with stories about her past cats and significant people in her life.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Spunky…The book combines Gershon's wacky efforts to find Cleo with scenes from her love life, and in both arenas, the actress marches to the beat of her own drum.”
Publishers Weekly

“Gina, if you lose your pussy again, let me know. I can be of service.”
Rita Mae Brown

“Cleo, good work. You've finally got your human trained.”
Sneaky Pie

"I loved this book. If you need to read this blurb before deciding to buy it there is something wrong with you. It has Gina. And her pussy. And her cat. And other sexy, funny and insane information. You will laugh and then laugh some more."
Denis Leary, author of Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy, and Stupid

“A wonderful little book!”
Jennifer Fox, Between the Covers Bookstore (Telluride, CO)

Library Journal

She's done movies (Showgirls), television (Curb Your Enthusiasm), and theater (as a founding member of the group Naked Angels), but when her beloved cat vanishes, Gershon plays her most important role ever: impassioned cat lady hunting obsessively for her missing pet. A cat-loving, colorful travelog.

Kirkus Reviews

An actress searches for her cat in Los Angeles. After Cleo, Gershon's beloved cat, was lost by her flaky assistant, she went to extreme lengths to find him. She skulked around West Hollywood in the early-morning hours with a can of tuna and a knife, meeting a kindly newspaper deliveryman along the way; she consulted Ellen Degeneres' pet psychic; she got spit on by a Santeria priest during a live chicken sacrifice; and she attended workshops by scam-artist swamis. In the end, none of these desperate, expensive measures were necessary: Cleo was returned by someone who saw one of Gershon's many "lost cat" posters. When Sonia, the pet psychic, first told her that "two spirits" would help her find Cleo, she immediately interpreted that to mean her uncle Jack and her friend Ted, both of whom had passed away recently. She took this prediction as evidence of the psychic's reliability, but, later in the book, she wonders if the newspaper deliveryman was one of the spirits. Gershon insists on a sort of magical connection between her and the entire cat species; the stories she uses to support this assertion--e.g., being "invited" by a cat to a private cat party in rural Vermont--strain credulity. Gershon thoughtfully weaves the wacky cat-finding stories with stories about her past cats and significant people in her life. Though these anecdotes aren't always fascinating, they are well-integrated into the story and give the thin premise of this book some needed heft. Well organized but mostly frivolous and at times implausible.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169747522
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	10/11/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

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