Lean Cat, Savage Cat

Lean Cat, Savage Cat is the book that’s been missing from my reading habits: classically glamourous, timelessly seductive, and painfully aware of the pitfalls of styling a life that cuts against the norm. Lauren J. Joseph is a wit and an assassin from one sentence to the next -- TORREY PETERS, author of Detransition, Baby
A dense, humid dance floor of a book. I plunged feet-first into its hot, dark rooms, overspilling with scandal and sensuality. The language is lush and relentless - I inhaled every line -- JODIE HARSH
Even though I know better, Lauren J. Joseph's dangerously stylish and relentlessly sexy novel made me long for wild nights among Berlin’s demi-mondaines: the glittering chaos, the glamour of bad decisions, the drugs and clubs and would-be Bowies with their would-be Romy Haags. I was completely delighted and impressed by the level of filth! -- ANDREA LAWLOR, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
An erotic spectacular of self-creation and spiralling disintegration: a wunderkammer of spoiling promise that combines the mounting tension of The Talented Mr Ripley with the bleak, exquisite social comedy of Isherwood and Waugh, confirming the gimlet-eyed brilliance of Lauren J. Joseph -- OLIVIA LAING
Joseph’s prose is as sharp as her imagination, as swishy as a pussy-bow and ( when need be) as blunt as a thrown hammer. Her storyline goes for Goth-romance broke, reimagining and role-reversing the classic pairing of Trilby and Svengali amidst the after-dark club-culture of a Bowie-haunted, stimulant-addled Berlin. Erotic obsession, bad drugs , worse decisions - and enough eye-rollingly explicit and gender-fucked backroom action to get anybody’s license revoked. What could possibly go wrong? -- NEIL BARTLETT
No one is doing it like Lauren, a cool old soul with a refreshingly original sensibility. With its sexy humor, relentless pacing, and enchanting balance of silly and sinister, Lean Cat, Savage Cat is (in appropriately cinematic terms) a screwball noir that deserves your full attention -- DAVEY DAVIS
This book is a rare thing, a genuinely unmediated confrontation with desire. A book about the truths told by bodies and the lies told by brains -- KEIRAN GODDARD
Lauren J Joseph's writing goes from strength to strength. In this new novel she's created characters and scenes that are so vivid I thought I was hanging out with friends - voyeuristically judging their delusions and dramas! Lean Cat, Savage Cat is a timely story dabbling in fame and love, sex and queerness, and it is riveting. I raced through this book -- ADAM ZMITH
Praise for At Certain Points We Touch: A moving portrait of youth, friendship and first love * Observer, Debut Novelists of 2022 *
An essential read * Stylist *
This vivid debut novel has a live current running through its pages ... An impressive debut with lines that linger with on the page * Esquire *
A smart, sparkling, twisting, millennial queer odyssey ... Lithe, perspicacious, melancholic and funny as hell * Attitude *
Beautifully written, smart, snappy story of queer love. Incredibly funny and moving -- Juno Roche
A stone-cold masterpiece, which in its scope, frankness and ambition reminds me of The Line of Beauty, retooled for the 21st century. By turns libidinous, hilarious, melancholy and full of feeling, it reveals Lauren John Joseph as a shocking new talent -- Olivia Laing
Lauren John Joseph writes with such wit, glamour, and Style! I haven’t read a book that so powerfully evokes what it’s like to be a wild young artist among other wild young artists since the Bright Young Things were publishing -- Torrey Peters
This is fabulous: screamingly funny, scandalously hot, opulent, deep - a devastating torch song of obsession and excess -- Jeremy Atherton Lin
Examines queer loss and survival elegantly, devastatingly, and critically incisive. Lauren John Joseph is a writer to reckon with. I'll read whatever they'll write next -- Isabel Waidner
Lauren's debut novel is so exciting. The writing is so fresh, funny and gripping - and carries the trademark wit that I have always loved from Lauren -- Travis Alabanza

Lauren J. Joseph’s sharp wit and tantalizing storytelling carried me deep into Berlin’s alluring and chaotic nightlife. A glamorous, seductive novel about obsession, self-destruction, and, ultimately, self-discovery

-- CARTER SICKELS