Soothing Music for Stray CatsEmma Rae, Planet Magazine, issue 195
“reminiscent of Holden Caulfield's voice in J.D.Salinger's Catcher in the Rye...a richly comic debut novel of youthful dreams and adult despair, told with rough charm… a generous and engaging novel which embraces the extremes of human experience so thoughtfully and yet so lightly."
Times Literary Supplement
“may emerge as one of the great, eccentric London novels... Jayne Joso, who has lived and worked in Japan, is well placed to note the vagaries of mixed-up, mixed-race Britain. SOOTHING MUSIC FOR STRAY CATS, named after an album of retro doo-wop and swing by the Liverpool singer-songwriter Edgar "Jones" Jones… it tells a compelling story."
Natalie Haynes, BBC2 Newsnight Review regular panellist, author and comedian
‘an unexpected and moving story about the redemption of misfits and the consolation of strangers.’
Joe Moran, Author and Guardian Journalist
Jayne Joso's novel skilfully melds the esoteric and the everyday, the surreal and the banal, to create a strangely gripping narrative full of dark humour. SOOTHING MUSIC FOR STRAY CATS marks the debut of a distinctive voice in contemporary British fiction."
British fiction and the cultural in-between, Ian Thomson, Times Literary Supplement
Joso and Soothing Music for Stray Cats
"Joso is an extraordinary writer of fiction...The way Joso draws the reader into the story through the wholly unique and charismatic voice of her main character, Mark is nothing short of genius. It’s very rare I engage with a main character so empathetically but in Joso’s I’m so in touch with the man that I swear I can almost feel him breathing..." Robert J. Burdock
‘Soothing Music for Stray Cats’ shortlisted for the People's Book Prize 2010
