Customer Reviews

Rat Life

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved RAT LIFE, Tedd Arnold's first foray into young adult literature. The writing is funny at times and always fresh, and Arnold uses his main character's interest in the craft of writing to make some keen observations about the process.

This book made me laugh one minute and gasp in shock the next. Its narrator, Todd, is a would-be writer growing up in Upstate NY in 1972. In the first pages of the book, he hears about a body found in a river and meets a mysterious character who calls himself Rat. Todd wonders if Rat, an underaged recruit who's just back from a tour of Vietnam, has something to do with that body in the river, and those suspicions mount throughout the novel, all the way to its dizzying climax.

I could go on and on about the humor, the interesting writing strategies Arnold employed, the gut-wrenching scene that almost made me stop reading but is so important to the book... but I'll let you discover this one for yourself. Don't start reading until you have some time; you won't want to take breaks.

The creator of a bunch of humorous picture books and a great new series of early readers ("Fly Guy") also does novels! Well at least he's done one, and it's quite good. It's narrated by fourteen year old Todd, who has some odd and interesting experiences during the spring of 1972. Most are related in some way to an older boy known only as "Rat." We eventually learn that Rat is a Vietnam vet whose childhood was about as bad as it gets. But when Todd meets him, he's a fascinating, slightly scary figure. It's easy to see why Todd is intrigued by Rat, but less clear in the beginning why this older young man would take an interest in a boy several years younger. The reasons are right there in the book, though, and Arnold neatly avoids hitting us over the head with them. It starts when Rat watches Todd put an injured dog out of her misery; this certainly must resonate with Rat's Vietnam experiences, but that's never stated, which is just right. The book is subtitled "a mystery," but the heart of the novel is really the relationship between these two characters. While Todd gets to know Rat better, he's also developing into a real writer. His shares early efforts with his friends and gets some praise from an English teacher, but it's through his experiences with Rat that he really starts to learn how to write what's important. Todd's interest in writing emerges in an intriguing introduction, where he tries out eight possible first lines for his book, rejecting each for different reasons. Besides being a great way to introduce a first person narrator, this allows him to plant some kernels related to future action that makes us want to learn more. It's the sort of device that can easily seem contrived, but it works perfectly here. It soon becomes clear that Rat must somehow be connected to a mysterious murder in town, and the discovery of how and why provides the main tension of the story. It all comes to a head when the town is flooded, and although this is the most dramatic action we see, it's also where I lost interest a bit. The flood scenes drag on a bit, and the near drownings are actually less involving than some of the tense, meaningful, conversations between Todd and Rat. It's not like any readers will quit midway, though. Both Todd and Rat are way too interesting.

This book is not for teens and as an adult it was extremely disturbing. My 15 year old started to read this and got 1/4 of the way in and was extremely disturbed by the imagery and narrative about the puppy. This does not support the story nor is it needed and should have required some kind of warning on the cover. If not bad enough, the author chooses to reintroduce the event throughout the book. I would not recommend this book period, its poor in terms of detective anything, the imagery is well written but the imagery itself is not one that I, nor I would suspect most people who do not dwell on the maudlin, will not appreciate this. This book is not for an animal lover or anyone with an ounce of compassion for living things. If anyone does enjoy this, I would strongly advise against them having any kind of weapons license.