The Three Lives of Cate Kay

by Kate Fagan ★★★★★

In the opening pages of The Three Lives of Cate Kay, we learn that our primary narrator has lived under three identities: "I was born Anne Marie Callahan, but growing up, my best friend called me Annie. A few years later, I legally changed it to Cass Ford. Then, I published under the pseudonym Cate Kay." As a writer, she is the author of a mega-hit series of post-apocalyptic books, but she has kept herself out of the spotlight completely. That doesn't mean she just declines interviews; instead, she has maintained complete anonymity, and fewer than five people on the planet actually know that she is the author of those books.

There are significant reasons for this, and the novel is an unveiling of those reasons and the events that follow. Annie/Cass/Cate—I'll just stick with Annie from here forward—receives a package from her attorney relinquishing control of her Cate Kay business dealings, but with it she also receives a handwritten note from her literary agent—a woman she's never met—suggesting she finally put the mystery to bed and share her story via a memoir. After initial reticence, the idea sticks with Annie, and she eventually relents.

But it won't just be Annie as narrator. She realizes that to tell her story fully, she will need to incorporate other voices:

"I told Melody on the first phone call that I couldn't be the only one to tell this story. I'd lived inside it for far too long. Better to throw open the windows and tell it from every angle, for better or worse. Within these pages, you will read about what happened from my perspective, as well as from those whose stories collided with my own...Carved from a mass of bad decisions and selfishness and, it pains me to admit, cruelty. And yet, I want you to love me anyway. No use pretending otherwise. I'm done hiding who I am. My mind's long been divided on the question of my goodness—and now, here you are, the deciding vote."

Annie starts from her childhood in upstate New York. It's 1991, she's nine years old, and she meets Amanda Kent for the first time, a girl who would become her inseparable best friend. The story traces the growth of their friendship, a life-altering event in their hometown, and Annie's reinvention of herself as Cass Ford. The multiple points of view help to round out the story, and while it's not quite an oral history, the entries are chronologically ordered and it reminded me a bit of Daisy Jones and the Six. A chunk of the novel takes places in Hollywood, and there is plenty of commentary on the unfair expectations that industry has for its female stars in particular, from body image to public image.

In addition to Annie's fascinating life story, it also explores all of those events from a queer point of view (I'm not spoiling anything—Annie talks about an ex-girlfriend in the opening pages). Author Kate Fagan tackles the challenges of discovering one's gay sexual identity in parts of the country where it's less common or less accepted, combined with later challenges of living authentically as a mainstream Hollywood actor. Being gay in Hollywood is okay...but not if you're a young starlet, and particularly not in the early 2000s when much of the book takes place.

There's a lot to like in this one. It's a page-turner—I read it in a weekend—and Fagan does a nice job of foreshadowing hints of what's to come without revealing everything too soon. Annie's life story reads like a Hollywood script, running the gamut on emotional situations from romance to grief, betrayal to redemption and forgiveness. There's enough mystery and intrigue to keep a reader glued to the first half of the book, and from there one is left rooted to the story in the hopes of a happy ending for Annie. One or two unlikely plot developments bump it down from the upper echelon of 5-star books I read this year, but it's still one that I found wholly enjoyable and worth reading.