3.5. A little too long-winded but a good Bryce Courtenay novel (also exceedingly disturbing content).

I had been wanting to read this book since I was a child, intrigued by its cover, with no clue what the story was about. It was worth the wait.

This is the story of a former lawyer, struggling with alcoholism, the impacts his addiction has had on his now estranged family, & his current life as a homeless person.

Set in/around the mid-90s in Sydney NSW, Billy meets an 11 year old boy named Ryan. They build a friendship through the (true) story of Matthew Flinders cat, Trim.
With both of them experiencing disadvantage & fighting their own demons, the story becomes a form of escape for them both.

The book explores a number of social issues plaguing Sydney’s streets, from homelessness, alcohol & drug misuse, to the corruption of the wealthy (including Government figures & organisations).

I have only given this book a 4 star rating, as I believe the racial stereotypes enforced in this book made it difficult to read at times.
Despite this, I believe these stereotypes have intentionally been included, to shine a light on the Australian attitude toward our multicultural/diverse population, particularly in the time it is set. The use of “Aborigine” toward Indigenous people was hard for me to consistently read as an Indigenous person myself, however I can understand that this was formerly the “politically correct” way of referring to Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people.

I will also add a warning for future readers, that it details/retells the rape of a young person.

This book was hard to put down, at times leaving me a sobbing mess. It now sits amongst some of my top favourites & I couldn’t recommend this book enough.

An exploration of alcoholism and recovery, guilt and redemption, with an upclose look at how AA might work. Matthew Flinder's cat is the "higher power" ... This is my first Bryce Courtenay book (passed to me by a bibliophile friend) ... I'm not sure I'd have started reading another right off (The Persimmon Tree), but she passed it on to me as well and I just can't leave a free book unread.

This book was interesting, especially the life of Billy, but I found it really hard going, really drawn out and it took me a long time to read it. I was only going to give 2 stars but I’m not sure if my review is the fault of the story or the stress in my life right now so I thought I’d give the story the benefit of the doubt and gave it three.

Another powerful and brilliant piece of story telling by Bryce Courtenay. Having read a good amount of his other novels it felt good to dive into his brilliant way of storytelling. Like in his other novels, Bryce has a knack for touching on society's harsh environments and has a tendency to uproot the evil and expose this to his audience, often shocking us with all the nitty gritty truths. Bryce often includes extreme hardships, loss and human desperation in his novels and Bryce depicts this very well. Needless to say Matthew Flinders' Cat is no exception and truly depicts the life of an alcoholic derelict in Sydney.

We follow three main story lines that are of course all connected. Our main character is Billy O'Shannessy, a once prominent lawyer with a family and excellent prospects, who now lives rough on the streets as a derelict and full-time alcoholic. Then we have young Ryan. An eleven year old boy who struggles to go to school due to his complex family situation. His grandmother is a loving, caring woman who is unable to care for Ryan because she is in the final stages of cancer. Ryan's mother is equally incapable of caring for him, since she is a heroin addict and works as an exotic dancer to feed her insatiable appetite for drugs.

Lastly, we have the tale of the once great sailor Matthew Flinders himself and especially his amazing sea faring cat, Trim. We follow their tales across the seas alongside our characters.

One morning after a particularly bad night of drinking Billy awakes to the sound of the birds on his favourite bench. Shortly after waking he meets Ryan who is skateboarding in the area. They start talking about the bronze statue of Trim that is located across the bench where Billy sleeps. Ryan is immediately interested to hear all about Trim, probably as a means to escape is own chaotic life. Billy likewise loves the story of Trim and is happy to share the first part of the story with Ryan. As the book and their friendship progresses, Billy shares more and more tales about the wondrous Trim and his crew ant the adventures that they embark on. Supposedly the story of Matthew Flinders and Trim is well known, however we find out that Ryan had never learnt about them and thus is eager to hear as much as he can from Billy.

Ryan soon feels gravitated to Billy and shows no fear towards him, although he is a derelict and much older. Most likely, Billy is fulfilling an emotional need for Ryan who feels lost at school and who struggles with his chaotic household that proves to offer little stability.

Billy however is fighting his own personal demons and vowed never to be or feel responsible for another human being since his fall from grace. He indulges Ryan now and again at first as he feels a distant emotional connection that he hasn't experienced in years. Once it becomes apparent that his friendship with Ryan may be perceived as less than pure, Billy flees town. He convinces himself that Ryan is better off without him and is happy to be without responsibility for another person once again. Although Billy lives rough and drinks heavily, he always shows good manners and is polite to those around him. He takes care of himself on pension day and is well known and accpeted among several establishments. This makes it hard for him to leave Sydney as he knowingly has to leave his routine and miss out on the goodwill of the people that know him.

It is during the time Billy flees to Surfers Paradise that a change begins to take place. Not only does Billy feel like a coward by running away from the city and Ryan but there is also a gnawing feeling that he needs to get himself sorted out in order to help Ryan in some way.
So we follow the contact Billy has with Ryan's school and how the news of Ryan's absence at school and his clear distress at Billy's departure pushes Billy to finally take care of himself.

We go from Billy the alcoholic in denial of his problem, to Billy the fighter recovering from his addiction. As Billy recovers he writes letters to Ryan to help himself through his recovery. In some of these letters he includes more tales of Trim, which leads him to Trim being his almighty force to help him in his recovery.
Once Billy learns that Ryan's grandmother has passed away and that Ryan is skipping out on school even more, Billy uses every ounce of his willpower to get back to Sydney without backsliding and gets into a treatment program. This leads to many a heart-breaking situation in which Ryan is missing after his mothers overdose, and word on the street is that Ryan will be sent to a juvenile detention centre for buying her drugs.

With some assistance and a lot of challenging detective work Billy sets to work finding Ryan while fighting to stay sober and continue working on his recovery. He decides then and there to fight for Ryan's no matter what and ensure the boy has a safe home and good future prospects. This leads Billy to the discovery of the underground pedophilia going on in Sydney's hidden underbelly. Billy finds Ryan eventually and hears how Ryan was lured into the pedophile circle and forced to do unspeakable things. Billy swear to Ryan that from that moment on he will fight for him tooth and nail and do everything in his power to keep Ryan safe. In order to achieve this, Billy digs deep and builds a solid case for Ryan as well as gets in touch with an old lawyer friend to help their case.

The book ends on a high note with the bad guys caught, Ryan safe and happy in a loving foster home and Billy sober and back to practicing law. Now Billy fights for the young, abused youths who like Ryan are preyed on and are stuck in the dregs of society.

This book is about a man that was once a prominent Sydney barrister but is now a drunk, who befriends a young ten year old boy with family problems and the story of a cat.
I enjoyed it, but not as much as some of Courtney's other books. I am still struggling with the whole cat thing. It was meant to be the focus of the book. The drunk looked up to this cat, but I still couldn't really get it to relate back to his story. Bits and pieces I could, but I just didn't feel that I got it properly.
My other complaint with the book was the ending. It finished too neatly and easily. Too much happened in that last page, and too nicely.

I love Bryce Courtenay's writing and Humphrey Bower's narration. What a winning team! Billy O'Shannessy was a complex, very flawed but ultimately likable character. The story line was a tough one, but was handled well by the author. I will definitely be reading more audio books by this dynamic duo.

To quote an expression from the book, “I got gypped.”
You see, I’ve never read a Bryce Courtenay book before, not even The Power Of One. I’ve always been keen to see what all the fuss was about, so I finally decided on reading Matthew Flinders’ Cat. For me, the idea of reading about the circumnavigation of Australia through the eye of a cat sounded original and potentially entertaining. However, to my dismay I found that this novel is not really about Matthew Flinders’ Cat. In fact, Trim the feline hero only appears in small snippets.
The story is actually about an alcoholic named Billy. Billy lives on the street and is addicted to Scotch. What drove him there is not discovered until the final chapters of the book, but by that stage I didn’t care. I didn’t care about Billy for a number of reasons, and I resented Courtenay’s attempt to make me empathise and excuse Billy’s addictive lifestyle. There are passages in this book that read like a lecture on why people become addicts and how society and poor fathers are mostly to blame. Most of the addicts Billy meets are victims of circumstance who have become junkies to cope with the pain and trauma in their lives — no fault of their own.
I didn’t care.
What I cared about was the cat. The bloody cat in the bloody title who I thought this book was about!
The misery of this book is compounded by Courtenay’s writing. The first half of the book is repetitive and was in dire need of an editors pen. The second half of the book is filled with awful stories of pedophilia. Also, Courtenay has an annoying habit of constantly telling the reader things we had already deduced for ourselves. To make matters worse, Courtenay cops out of any real ending with a couple of newspaper articles that are supposed to bring closure to the story, but just feel lazy and cliche. It’s almost as though by the end of the book, Bryce too stopped caring.

Humans, like all creatures, put themselves first. The only difference was that, unlike other species, they had the power to alter the balance of nature, and it was this that made them so dangerous. History was all about greed. Enough is never quite enough.

This is the story of a seafaring cat, his master Matthew Flinders and their adventures. It is also the story of Billy an attorney who is facing hard times and a young boy whom he met. He is telling the story of Trim the cat to the young fellow. The story is set in Sydney, Australia at the botanical gardens. This is a powerful story of alcoholism, drug abuse and sex crimes and the journey to a better life for both man and boy. Fabulous reading as anything by Bryce Courtenay is. I just loved this book.

The only thing I remember about this book is being absolutely distraught when the cat died. Probably because I kind of envisioned the cat as looking like my own. I want to re-read it, but since said-cat disappeared earlier this year (and I'm still not over it, by the way), I'm not really sure I'll manage.
But I do remember really enjoying the book, anyway...

A derelict former barrister, living on the streets in New South Wales, enjoys the company of a statue of Matthew Flinders’ cat—a famous feline that sailed with its owner around Australia in days of danger, pirate and storm. But the present (or recent past) day might be filled with danger too, especially for a young boy whose mother’s lifestyle leaves him fending for himself. And the runaway drunkard just might need to save himself before he can help the runaway child.

Bryce Courtenay’s novel blends empathy for the broken with sympathy for the lost, and vivid depictions of history through the eyes of a cat! It’s a truly curious combination, that truly works. Gritty, cynical, hopeful and wild, the story takes its protagonist to the shores of the ocean and the depths of despair before it reveals a way forward. The horrors of addiction, the struggles and trials of the sober and those they might help, the breaking threads of regulated assistance, and the promise of hope all come together in a story that promises laughter and tears, loss and gain, and genuine reform.

Plus there’s that ever-enticing voice of the cat, and lessons hidden behind its meow.

Disclosure: My sister-in-law correctly guessed I’d love this!