Take a raunchy, rollicking, harrowing plunge into Life with “Wearing the Cat”.
“Wearing the Cat” is a comic picaresque novel divided into two volumes: “Wearing the Cat – The Complete Novel, Volume One” and “Wearing the Cat – The Complete Novel, Volume Two”
Set in 1988, with America near the height of her power, prestige, and influence, “Wearing the Cat” concerns the exuberant and blackly comic misadventures of Lt. Nick McGill, dentist in the United States Navy Dental Corps.
In “Wearing the Cat”, Lt Nick McGill feels that his life has gone wrong. He joined the Navy as a way to add excitement to his life only to discover a distinct lack of wine, women, and adventure in the day to day drill and fill of the Williamsville Naval Dental Clinic. Tooth decay? Oh, yeah. Plenty of that. Bad breath? Goes with the territory. The three little words? If only he didn’t have to hear those three little words ever again.
Worst of all, in his boredom and loneliness, McGill finds himself questioning past decisions, and feeling nostalgic about past girlfriends.
Perhaps all he needs to do is to get laid.When into his life steps his new, wondrously sexy Dental Assistant, DT2 Sayers. That is, Dental Technician Second Class Sayers.
But, there’s a problem. Well, actually, two problems.
One, sex between officers and enlisted, dating even, is fraternization, a court-martial offense, which McGill’s Commanding Officer, the Old Man, is a stickler for. That is, when not giving McGill the kind of lecture which makes him want to count the freckles on his arm.
And two, there are rumors that DT2 Sayers got kicked out of Japan. By the Japanese government. What is that all about?
McGill’s idiotic yet brilliant solutions to his dilemmas lead to an exquisite series of surprises, twists, shocks, and laughs as just about everything that could possibly go wrong for McGill does. And changes his life forever.
Wry and ribald, deeply human and wildly hilarious, sexy and subversive, with excellent oral hygiene, “Wearing the Cat” is a fun, funny, and satisfying read.
Lt. Nick McGill is stationed at an air base in Japan. As a member of the Dental Corps, his duties on base tend to involve drilling teeth and waiting around for dental emergencies, and he tries to keep his sanity despite military rigmarole. McGill engages in plenty of scenes of military comedy (some involving a rival lieutenant who develops a foot condition). His off-base actions, though, are at the heart of this bumpy adventure. He learns a lot about Japan as he teaches English to a high-rolling businessman named Mr. Sanbuichi, and he also falls in love with a local woman named Saori Sawa. He ventures into the country with gusto, noting that “If a spindly, Brit could become Lawrence of Arabia, then surely he, an American Uberlieutenant and Dentist, could become McGill of Japan.” Along the way, the Navy man becomes steeped in Japanese mythology and cuisine—he learns about a fabled fox with seven tails and the dangers of fugu fish, for example—all while pursuing sex with local women. Woodard makes clear that McGill doesn’t shy away from crassness; for instance, the lieutenant frequently refers to his “hardometer”—a metaphorical measurement of how erect his penis is. When a plane crash occurs on base, however, the novel takes a darker turn, and McGill’s story takes on a new level of earnestness. Readers will find that when a goofy figure like McGill deals with the unimaginable task of identifying mangled bodies, it gives the book a striking, unexpected realism. They’ll wonder how a man whose normal day-to-day concerns revolve around crude sexual fantasies deals with sea gulls picking at the remains of his former colleagues. The McGill that eventually emerges may still compare an indigestion-induced bowel movement to “fifty gallons of rich brown gravy,” but both he and readers come away with a fuller understanding of life and loss by the end of the novel.
A raunchy but memorable military tale.
