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Yaxley's Cat
Yaxley's cottage looked like the perfect place for a holiday, until the cat, intent on revealing the terrible truth, arrived. The author twice won the Carnegie Medal for "The Machine-Gunners" and "The Scarecrows" and in 1989 "Blitzcat" won the 9-11 years category of the Smarties Prize.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
2 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
About the author
Robert Westall
122 books110 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Robert Westall was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England in 1929.
His first published book The Machine Gunners (1975) which won him the Carnegie Medal is set in World War Two when a group of children living on Tyneside retrieve a machine-gun from a crashed German aircraft. He won the Carnegie Medal again in 1981 for The Scarecrows, the first writer to win it twice. He won the Smarties Prize in 1989 for Blitzcat and the Guardian Award in 1990 for The Kingdom by the Sea. Robert Westall's books have been published in 21 different countries and in 18 different languages, including Braille.
From: http://www.robertwestall.com/
Robert Westall was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England in 1929.
His first published book The Machine Gunners (1975) which won him the Carnegie Medal is set in World War Two when a group of children living on Tyneside retrieve a machine-gun from a crashed German aircraft. He won the Carnegie Medal again in 1981 for The Scarecrows, the first writer to win it twice. He won the Smarties Prize in 1989 for Blitzcat and the Guardian Award in 1990 for The Kingdom by the Sea. Robert Westall's books have been published in 21 different countries and in 18 different languages, including Braille.
From: http://www.robertwestall.com/
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
May 7, 2021
This is a brilliant novella of city folk spending a week of vacation in the wrong part of rural East Anglia.
Rose and her young son and daughter rent old Mr. Yaxley's cottage. Old Yaxley disappeared seven years before after a lifetime as local Cunning Man. His cottage is preserved as he left it, obviously unexpectedly. There's more than one strange book to hand.
Interactions with local people are fraught, and menace increases with each day. At first it is class resentment, the situation quickly deteriorates.
To say nothing of the cat!
Rose and her young son and daughter rent old Mr. Yaxley's cottage. Old Yaxley disappeared seven years before after a lifetime as local Cunning Man. His cottage is preserved as he left it, obviously unexpectedly. There's more than one strange book to hand.
Interactions with local people are fraught, and menace increases with each day. At first it is class resentment, the situation quickly deteriorates.
To say nothing of the cat!
August 26, 2011
I had completely forgotten about this book that I had read as a kid, until recently our neighbour's cat that resembles the cat on the book cover, has been coming over to our balcony; and I was immediately reminded of the Robert Westall novel. After Machine Gunners and Fathom Five I was thoroughly hooked on Robert Westall, so I came into this expecting much of the same boys on an adventure kind of feel. But this was something different and unexpectedly creepy (especially for young adults). Can't say that I loved it nor hated it, I just didn't expect the complete change of style and tone that made Machine Gunners and Fathom Five so enjoyable.
September 2, 2020
What a strange little book. Very much like The Durrels in Corfu meets Shirley Jackson. I was surprised by the tacky cover and the YA designation. I mean, it’s not bloody but it’s very odd and spooky.
August 19, 2015
An excellent read. If you liked the movie, The Wicker Man, this book will be right up your alley.
August 26, 2022
I recently decided to read again this book that I bought when I was a child, and I have to admit that after all this years it still has charm. A nice short Summer read, to travel with the mind in an isolated British village, where superstition and magic go with crime.
January 1, 2024
So, this was a real fail for me, I ended up skim reading through a lot of it to find out how the ending goes: I don't know how to shake this notion I have that Westall was a writer of sci-fi, it has tripped me up before. He is a good writer of his era, he wrote children's books from the 70's to the 90's (he may still be writing for all I know) so Yaxley's Cat from 1991 is not one of his earlier books.
His writing style is very nice indeed, he is great at setting scenes and he often has animals as part of his plots, which I like. Westall often has a lot of interesting facts in his stories and here it is the history of the 'Cunning men' which were, of course, the village witches and practitioners of wisdom, or sometimes magic in parts of England, I especially liked the point made by one character that '...the NHS kind of wiped them out'. BUT while there is often something a bit spooky/fantasy like, they are not real fantasy and certainly not sci-fi.
Anyway...Plot: Rose is grumpy with her husband, who earns a lot of money but is domineering. Sounds like he tries hellishly hard to make her happy, but she isn't and can't/won't tell him why because she is a doormat. So she takes their two children on a long aimless holiday, eventually ending up in a small, inbred village where she rents a cottage for them all. This cottage ends up as having been the home of a 'cunning man' Yaxley, who vanished seventy years ago, no one knows alive or dead.... woo woo.
The main issue I had with this book - which was a good concept and well written - were the characters. And part of that, I think, was that this book did not seem to know for sure who it was written for. Rose is an adult and the main protagonist, she is aimless, not stupid but stupidly unable to function as an adult. She is bossed around by everyone, including her two preadolescent children. She is a trainwreak, not unbelievable, but incredibly frustrating.
Her daughter, Jane calls her a 'wet lettuce' at one stage, and that sums her up perfectly. Rose, btw does not react or respond to that or any other insult from her unpleasant children. She does not seem to have an issue with not seeing them from day break till supper time either - is that not a tiny bot odd? No idea where they are in the countryside, never asks them about their day when nasty things keep happening to her... Nor does she in any way step up to the son, Tim, having an air-pistol which he uses to shoot at people. Is that legit? Could you DO that in the UK 1990's?
So with an adult main protagonist - is it meant for adults? Surely not! Rose is ineffectual as a human, adult or not, parent or not this can't be for adults.
Is it meant for children? But we almost never see Tim and Jane, surely it should be from their perspective, if it is for children.
It is clearly meant to be a 'spooky' type, supernatural-ish story but it is hard to swallow because Rose is such a muddle headed wombat that you can't trust her interpretation of any events.
I was mildly curious to see what the ending was, so I skim read a lot of really silly, largely dull non-events and other events that COULD have been fun - maybe from Jane and Tim's perspective.
The ending was really not worth waiting for. The villages decide to burn them all as witches (for living in the house, or finding stuff or....whatever) , then the police arrive, they all end up in a police station with Tim in charge apparently, and the husband (Philip?) turns up to save them.
I hope he gets Rose the psychiatric attention she so obviously needs, or gets her off the Valium that one suspects she must be taking to be so fuzzy minded the whole time.
His writing style is very nice indeed, he is great at setting scenes and he often has animals as part of his plots, which I like. Westall often has a lot of interesting facts in his stories and here it is the history of the 'Cunning men' which were, of course, the village witches and practitioners of wisdom, or sometimes magic in parts of England, I especially liked the point made by one character that '...the NHS kind of wiped them out'. BUT while there is often something a bit spooky/fantasy like, they are not real fantasy and certainly not sci-fi.
Anyway...Plot: Rose is grumpy with her husband, who earns a lot of money but is domineering. Sounds like he tries hellishly hard to make her happy, but she isn't and can't/won't tell him why because she is a doormat. So she takes their two children on a long aimless holiday, eventually ending up in a small, inbred village where she rents a cottage for them all. This cottage ends up as having been the home of a 'cunning man' Yaxley, who vanished seventy years ago, no one knows alive or dead.... woo woo.
The main issue I had with this book - which was a good concept and well written - were the characters. And part of that, I think, was that this book did not seem to know for sure who it was written for. Rose is an adult and the main protagonist, she is aimless, not stupid but stupidly unable to function as an adult. She is bossed around by everyone, including her two preadolescent children. She is a trainwreak, not unbelievable, but incredibly frustrating.
Her daughter, Jane calls her a 'wet lettuce' at one stage, and that sums her up perfectly. Rose, btw does not react or respond to that or any other insult from her unpleasant children. She does not seem to have an issue with not seeing them from day break till supper time either - is that not a tiny bot odd? No idea where they are in the countryside, never asks them about their day when nasty things keep happening to her... Nor does she in any way step up to the son, Tim, having an air-pistol which he uses to shoot at people. Is that legit? Could you DO that in the UK 1990's?
So with an adult main protagonist - is it meant for adults? Surely not! Rose is ineffectual as a human, adult or not, parent or not this can't be for adults.
Is it meant for children? But we almost never see Tim and Jane, surely it should be from their perspective, if it is for children.
It is clearly meant to be a 'spooky' type, supernatural-ish story but it is hard to swallow because Rose is such a muddle headed wombat that you can't trust her interpretation of any events.
I was mildly curious to see what the ending was, so I skim read a lot of really silly, largely dull non-events and other events that COULD have been fun - maybe from Jane and Tim's perspective.
The ending was really not worth waiting for. The villages decide to burn them all as witches (for living in the house, or finding stuff or....whatever) , then the police arrive, they all end up in a police station with Tim in charge apparently, and the husband (Philip?) turns up to save them.
I hope he gets Rose the psychiatric attention she so obviously needs, or gets her off the Valium that one suspects she must be taking to be so fuzzy minded the whole time.
Read
January 24, 2025Even by Westall's standards this is a strange book, not least because you could almost imagine it beginning life as a scrawled note: 'Straw Dogs - for kids?' Rose is on holiday in East Anglia with her children, but without her husband, which hasn't stopped him from planning everything for them as efficiently as he always does. And it's her bridling at that, her wanting to just dawdle and get lost sometimes, which gets the story over that all-important horror hurdle of explaining why the protagonists are doing something so obviously likely to embroil them in a horror story. Rose is understandably reluctant when the kids charge into a deserted house, never mind want to stay there – but when she demurs, the perfectly wounding suggestion that she's as bad as Dad is enough for her to decide that yes, they will rent it for the week. And of course it's the wrong house, and they find suspicious things there, and the muttering, insular locals start dropping enigmatic hints and snide remarks, and then worse... Even considered simply as a village conspiracy story, it's perfectly solid, right down to the ambiguity over whether anything outright supernatural actually happens; if you insisted, you could certainly read it as needing only stubborn rural belief in that sort of thing, plus the inherent strangeness of cats (and frankly, the cat isn't as prominent a player as the cover and title suggest). But there are other interesting wrinkles, not least a book for younger readers which, rather than telling the story from the perspective of the kids for whom it's an adventure, is seen through the eyes of the parent trying to keep them safe even while unable to quite admit how far out of control things have got. And as the kids' practicality grows more alarming, the story turns back on itself; it's a time capsule of the late eighties in a lot of ways, but never more so than when it starts to ask whether maybe the next generation of yuppies aren't going to be worse than the lawless rustics. And looking at the world they made, you have to suspect Westall had a point there.
June 28, 2025
Robert Westall stories are always a comfort read for me, as he was one of my favourite childhood authors. There's a humour and humanity that grounds his writing, as well as an affection for tumbledown historic houses/antiques/folklore which resonates, so while his books can be a bit outdated/politically incorrect, it feels like spending time with a much-loved grandfather.
Rose, the main character of Yaxley's Cat, is a woman on the cusp of middle age seeking respite from a rocky marriage, and with ambivalent feelings towards her mildly anarchic teenage children (who she loves dearly, but sometimes feel unnervingly like strangers). I felt quite a bit of empathy for her situation with her tightly-controlling husband ("a man who ran her life for her, as if she was an incompetent"). This was convincingly drawn, such as this description of their holiday to Salzburg: "She and Philip saw everything there was to see, in the right order, and were back home again before she could draw breath or smell an apple-strudel. And then Philip saying, 'But what else did you want?' How could she ever explain she just wanted to get lost?"
The story has several familiar Westall tropes: a tumble-down deserted house that once belonged to a Cunning Man (a kind of folk healer, like a male witch), a cat with preternatural knowledge/strength, a remote village harbouring a secret... Reminiscent of his wonderful 1970s classic 'The Devil on the Road', though not quite in that league.
Rose, the main character of Yaxley's Cat, is a woman on the cusp of middle age seeking respite from a rocky marriage, and with ambivalent feelings towards her mildly anarchic teenage children (who she loves dearly, but sometimes feel unnervingly like strangers). I felt quite a bit of empathy for her situation with her tightly-controlling husband ("a man who ran her life for her, as if she was an incompetent"). This was convincingly drawn, such as this description of their holiday to Salzburg: "She and Philip saw everything there was to see, in the right order, and were back home again before she could draw breath or smell an apple-strudel. And then Philip saying, 'But what else did you want?' How could she ever explain she just wanted to get lost?"
The story has several familiar Westall tropes: a tumble-down deserted house that once belonged to a Cunning Man (a kind of folk healer, like a male witch), a cat with preternatural knowledge/strength, a remote village harbouring a secret... Reminiscent of his wonderful 1970s classic 'The Devil on the Road', though not quite in that league.
August 22, 2024
So, I bought it because one of the few YouTuber I follow mentions it a lot. He keeps showing the Italian edition but I wanted to read the real deal. And I bought the original in English.
I didn't remember anything from the first time I read it. Really. And I was surprised at first because it's told from the point of view of a mother of two. She's married to a very controlling and precise husband and she needs to get away for a while. And she ends in the middle of nowhere in an old cottage with a cat. The kids are happy but the town people not so much because the cottage hides a couple of secrets of its own.
Despite being a very short book, it took forever for the story to really start and it was a bit boring. And then it ended way too quickly. But it surely descrive perfectly a close-minded village.
I'll read something else by Robert Westall. I used to love his books as a kid.
I didn't remember anything from the first time I read it. Really. And I was surprised at first because it's told from the point of view of a mother of two. She's married to a very controlling and precise husband and she needs to get away for a while. And she ends in the middle of nowhere in an old cottage with a cat. The kids are happy but the town people not so much because the cottage hides a couple of secrets of its own.
Despite being a very short book, it took forever for the story to really start and it was a bit boring. And then it ended way too quickly. But it surely descrive perfectly a close-minded village.
I'll read something else by Robert Westall. I used to love his books as a kid.
December 5, 2024
A very unusual but fascinating read. I picked it up as it was on the Wikipedia list of titles published under Point Horror. I can't find any evidence at all that it was published under that line. It was published under Point in the US, which is a strange choice. It certainly doesn't fit in with others under that line, and Robert Westall was a British author.
I can't quite decide who this is aimed at. It doesn't read like children's or YA. The protagonist is an adult and there's profanity and much darker themes than you would usually find aimed at children and teens. This to me, is folk horror. There are themes of class dynamics of the 80's and also some magical realism. Worth a look.
I can't quite decide who this is aimed at. It doesn't read like children's or YA. The protagonist is an adult and there's profanity and much darker themes than you would usually find aimed at children and teens. This to me, is folk horror. There are themes of class dynamics of the 80's and also some magical realism. Worth a look.
October 17, 2025
Westall #3
I found this book some time ago, and was intrigued because of the title. My father's middle name was Yaxley, and it is not a name you hear very often.
One of the bad guys in Harry Potter is named Yaxley, but apart from that, I don';t think I have read it in literature.
Anyway, this is seemingly marketed to younger readers, but it certainly has some adult themes and some colourful language as well, making you wonder about that.
An average read, quick and easy, but probably forgettable, apart from, for men anyway, the title.
I found this book some time ago, and was intrigued because of the title. My father's middle name was Yaxley, and it is not a name you hear very often.
One of the bad guys in Harry Potter is named Yaxley, but apart from that, I don';t think I have read it in literature.
Anyway, this is seemingly marketed to younger readers, but it certainly has some adult themes and some colourful language as well, making you wonder about that.
An average read, quick and easy, but probably forgettable, apart from, for men anyway, the title.
September 6, 2019
Amazing! Very eerie sort of townspeople. Loved the son Tim and the mother Rose's doubt and amazement of her children the whole read.
March 5, 2017
“Lo stregone” è un interessantissimo thriller, che, a causa della protagonista adulta in prima persona, potrebbe dare l'impressione iniziale di essere destinato a lettori adulti, ma che invece è per ragazzi. La trentacinquenne Rose stressata dalla vita coniugale organizza, in compagnia dei suoi due figli, una vacanza un po' diversa dai soliti standard. Affittando un vecchio cottage nella campagna inglese ha intenzione dimenticare lo stress e di abbandonarsi a trascorrere settimane più semplici e in contatto con la natura, ma la casa presa in affitto non è una casa qualsiasi e presto lei e i due figli dovranno affrontare il segreto che nasconde...
L'ho trovato davvero molto carino, lo si legge velocemente e un crescendo di tensione mi ha accompagnata fino alle ultime pagine. Una lettura davvero piacevole, tenendo conto del target d'età dai 10 ai 13 anni a cui è destinato ne sono rimasta soddisfatta.
L'ho trovato davvero molto carino, lo si legge velocemente e un crescendo di tensione mi ha accompagnata fino alle ultime pagine. Una lettura davvero piacevole, tenendo conto del target d'età dai 10 ai 13 anni a cui è destinato ne sono rimasta soddisfatta.
January 5, 2016
“Lo stregone” è un breve thriller, che, a causa della protagonista adulta in prima persona, potrebbe dare l'impressione iniziale di essere destinato a lettori adulti, ma che invece è per ragazzi. La trentacinquenne Rose stressata dalla vita coniugale organizza, in compagnia dei suoi due figli, una vacanza un po' diversa dai soliti standard. Affittando un vecchio cottage nella campagna inglese ha intenzione dimenticare lo stress e di abbandonarsi a trascorrere settimane più semplici e in contatto con la natura, ma la casa presa in affitto non è una casa qualsiasi e presto lei e i due figli dovranno affrontare il segreto che nasconde...
L'ho trovato carino, lo si legge velocemente e un crescendo di tensione accompagna fino alle ultime pagine. Una lettura piacevole, tenendo conto del target d'età dai 10 ai 13 anni a cui è destinato; ne sono rimasta abbastanza soddisfatta.
L'ho trovato carino, lo si legge velocemente e un crescendo di tensione accompagna fino alle ultime pagine. Una lettura piacevole, tenendo conto del target d'età dai 10 ai 13 anni a cui è destinato; ne sono rimasta abbastanza soddisfatta.
October 3, 2010
I'm a big Robert Westall fan, but I didn't care for this one as much. The suspense was well handled, but the protagonist was such a passive character and she spent the entire book harried and confused and miserable to such an extent that it drained a lot of the charm from reading it, for me.
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May 22, 2012My dad retired last year and in looking through his files he found my Silent Sustained Reading Record from when I was in his class.
I thought it was interesting to see what I was reading back when I was 13!
No rating on this, because I don't remember it at all!
I thought it was interesting to see what I was reading back when I was 13!
No rating on this, because I don't remember it at all!
January 9, 2013
I was given a first edition as a Christmas present. As a Yaxley who loves cats it was a great gift. A quick read - can see it's appeal in adolescent fiction. The only other Yaxley that I know of in fiction is a baddie in Harry Potter.
September 25, 2019
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Westall’s books when I was younger. I’m glad I came across a copy of this at work.
August 19, 2016
What a gripping page turner. Certainly not suitable for faint hearted adults, haha! Robert Westall at his best.
March 16, 2023
A favourite author. Read him over and over.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews