My Life as a Rat

April 29, 2019
Oates’s remarkable latest (after 2018’s Hazards of Time Travel) chronicles how a 12-year-old girl’s fate is determined after her family disowns her. The story opens in 1991 as Violet Rue Kerrigan, the youngest in a large Irish-Catholic family where loyalty is highly valued, grows up doted on by her loving but short-tempered father. She witnesses what later turns out to be her eldest brothers, teenagers Jerome and Lionel, attempting to get rid of evidence that they had participated in the racially charged beating of a high school kid. Violet’s guilt—compounded by Lionel assaulting her and the death of their victim—makes her blurt out the truth unsolicited. Her parents, who can’t bring themselves to believe the truth about their sons, send Violet to live with an aunt in an upstate New York town 80 miles away. Violet spends her life hoping for her family’s change of heart and worrying about her brothers’ retaliation. Her urge to not betray anyone again makes her vulnerable to sexual abuse by a teacher and a lecherous uncle. Despite it all, Violet becomes a survivor who ekes out a living through manual labor and manages to attend college at night. Oates’s novel adroitly touches on race, loyalty, misogyny, and class inequality while also telling a moving story with a winning narrator. This book should please her fans and win her new ones.

Narrator Sadie Alexandru captures an adolescent protagonist with compassion, evoking both sorrow and shock. Violet Rue Kerrigan witnesses her brother's involvement in a vicious attack and is disowned by her family after she tells authorities what happened. As Violet's voice audibly matures throughout the arc of the novel, Alexandru illuminates hot-button issues of allegiance, misogyny, race, and economic disparity with a dramatist's talent for character development. Violet's family betrayal affects her life in heartbreaking ways, but Alexandru makes sure to allow the humanity and self-awareness of this young woman to emerge. Throughout this remarkable story of courage in the face of deep loss, Alexandru guides listeners through darkness to redemption. R.O. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine