The Meowmorphosis
Regular readers of my book reviews section will be familiar with the Quirk Classics approach. Take one classic novel, add a plot twist — be it in terms of setting, character, or plot — and publish. To a certain extent this formula can be said to work quite well. While the likes of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters was undoubtedly flawed from the start, both the prequel and the sequel to the best-seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies were both extremely enjoyable reads.
So we come then to Quirk Classics’ latest offering, The Meowmorphosis, a book based, as its title suggests, on Franz Kafka’s original work, The Metamophosis. As with all Quirk Classics productions, this too is a classic work with an added twist. In this case instead of awaking one day as an insect, here our protagonist Gregor Samsa is turned into a cat.
And there’s really not much more I can tell you about the plot of this novel without giving much more away. Those who have already read Kafka’s work will find this Quirk Classics adaptation follows a fairly similar line to the original with the notable exception of course that instead of an insect, our ‘hero’ Samsa is turned into a cat.
As you might appreciate, this particular concept comes with a number of flaws. For a start, the whole point of Kafka’s original work was that Samsa was a ‘crushed’ man — a man with the mentality of an insect, who is as a consequence of his nature, turned into one. Though Coleridge Cook does try and explain how someone in the exact same position as the character in the original doesn’t have the soul of an insect but instead has the soul of a cat, the concept seems confused from the start.
Which brings us on to the other major issue I’m still trying to get my head round…
As I sit back and reflect on what is in all honesty a fairly well written book of remarkably consistent style, I have to sit here and have to ask myself why?
Why did Quirk Classics choose this text above all others to apply their ‘quirky’ style to? Why, above all other works in the canon of literature, did they commission a book that so obviously doesn’t lend itself to an interesting (and funny) reinterpretation?
Yes Samsa is turned into a cat instead of an insect, but in all honesty if I wanted to imagine that I could just read Kafka’s original and imagine a cat instead of an insect. To me there just doesn’t seem to be a point in ‘reinventing’ a classic book such as this in the sense that there really is no need for it. Even Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters had a good concept of sorts, but The Meowmorphosis, The Meowmorphosis is just… ‘meh’.
And what makes my saying this all the more harder is that The Meowmorphosis isn’t even particularly bad in any way. As I have already mentioned, the style is remarkably consistent, and at no point did I find myself obviously aware of the shifts between the prose of the original or that of the new author Cook. Some people may well argue that a fairly dry style such as Kafka’s translated text reads isn’t the hardest style in the world to replicate, but from a personal perspective at least, I don’t see this as a problem. Given his starting premise, Coleridge Cook has done a remarkably good job. It’s just a wonder to me how anyone can justify the existence of a book that just doesn’t have anything to sell itself with.
Sorry Quirk Classics, but this book just doesn’t do it for me.
