Lean Cat, Savage Cat: A Novel
Feb 2026 · Catapult
Ebook
352
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
infoThis book will become available on February 17, 2026. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
A riotous and raunchy novel about a woman whose search for Romy Haag, one of David Bowie's former lovers, is sidelined when she falls into a deep obsession with a musician, who is often compared to Bowie, in pursuit of stardom
“Lean Cat, Savage Cat is the book that’s been missing from my reading habits: classically glamourous, timelessly seductive. Lauren J. Joseph is a wit and an assassin from one sentence to the next” —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
Alone at a party, sipping her celery sour, Charli knows she’s in a rut. Kicking around with the rest of London’s bohemian dropouts, she has no idea what to do with her arts degree and her research project on Romy Haag—the transsexual disco singer and long-time lover of David Bowie—has all but stalled out. But her life takes a turn when she bumps into the mysterious Alexander Geist. Androgynously, glamorously handsome, he feels something like a soul mate, another love once lost and now found. Naturally, when he leaves for Berlin, Charli follows.
There, at the center of the city’s febrile party scene, Charli and Alexander embark on their great project: turn Alexander into the greatest pop star since David Bowie. But Alexander is elusive, mercurial; Charli is in over her head before she realizes just how self-destructive her life has become under his spell.
Lean Cat, Savage Cat is Isherwood one-hundred years on, it's Nancy Mitford in the dark room, Bret Easton-Ellis amongst a raft of European low-lives scrabbling for success. It is the story of setting out in search of one thing and finding yourself in possession of something quite different, a book about obsession and excess, doppelgängers and disassociation, fame and fandom, the tyrannical return of unprocessed grief, and the terrible things we do to feel loved.
“Lean Cat, Savage Cat is the book that’s been missing from my reading habits: classically glamourous, timelessly seductive. Lauren J. Joseph is a wit and an assassin from one sentence to the next” —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
Alone at a party, sipping her celery sour, Charli knows she’s in a rut. Kicking around with the rest of London’s bohemian dropouts, she has no idea what to do with her arts degree and her research project on Romy Haag—the transsexual disco singer and long-time lover of David Bowie—has all but stalled out. But her life takes a turn when she bumps into the mysterious Alexander Geist. Androgynously, glamorously handsome, he feels something like a soul mate, another love once lost and now found. Naturally, when he leaves for Berlin, Charli follows.
There, at the center of the city’s febrile party scene, Charli and Alexander embark on their great project: turn Alexander into the greatest pop star since David Bowie. But Alexander is elusive, mercurial; Charli is in over her head before she realizes just how self-destructive her life has become under his spell.
Lean Cat, Savage Cat is Isherwood one-hundred years on, it's Nancy Mitford in the dark room, Bret Easton-Ellis amongst a raft of European low-lives scrabbling for success. It is the story of setting out in search of one thing and finding yourself in possession of something quite different, a book about obsession and excess, doppelgängers and disassociation, fame and fandom, the tyrannical return of unprocessed grief, and the terrible things we do to feel loved.
About the author
LAUREN J. JOSEPH (formerly La JohnJoseph) is a British born American-educated artist and writer, who works at the intersection of video, text, and live performance. She has written extensively on contemporary culture, art, performance, pornography, gender theory and the Golden Age of Hollywood, contributing in print and online to publications including iD, The Independent, Sleek, The Guardian, Time Out, Attitude, Amuse, Siegessäule, Parterre de Rois, Charleston Press, and the ‘zines Birdsong, Fat Zine, 21st Century Queer Artists Identify Themselves, and Not Here: An Anthology of Queer Loneliness. She has also authored the experimental prose work Everything Must Go (ITNA Press in 2014), and the plays, A Generous Lover and Boy in a Dress, which were published by Oberon in 2019. She has presented performances at the Royal Opera House; Deutsche Oper; Bristol Old Vic; Barbican; Schaubühne; Art Basel Hong Kong; SF MoMA; Dixon Place, NY; Martin-Gropius Bau; Fancy Him, Tokyo; La Java, Paris; and Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói. Her fine artwork has been shown in group exhibitions in the UK, US, Germany and Mexico.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
