August Rat Tat Review

Rat: A Novel
by Andrzej Zaniewski
translated from the Polish by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough
Hardcover, 157 pages
1993
Arcade Publishing, Inc.
New York
ISBN# 1-55970-262-1

This is a dark, depressing and excruciatingly painful novel chronicling the birth, life, suffering and death of - you guessed it - a rat. The story is reflected in the cover of the book, and, really, all you need to do to get a good impression of what's inside is to look at it. In this case a picture is definitely worth (and infinitely preferable to) several thousand words. Rat is nightmarish, dismal and gives one a horribly skewed look at what it might be like living the life of a wild rat in an Eastern European country.

This is Andrzej Zaniewski's first novel about animals. In the introduction he outlines his reasons for writing this book, but they are not really evident in the finished work. He says that by including "all possible information and gossip" about rats, "even the untrue elements of particular legends and tales", he is attempting to "get to know not only rats, but also people, who have created those stories out of disgust or hatred or, conversely, out of admiration, friendship or faith". Unfortunately, there is little admiration, friendship or faith detectable in the book and much disgust and hatred. I don't think there is any understanding of rats reached by the author and even less understanding of people. The whole book paints a portrait of depression, anger and fear - a very one-sided view of both these animals whose personalities encompass so much more.

Rat's best scenes are at the beginning, with the birth and development of a precocious male rat. He is born with a zest for exploration, which soon leads him beyond the confines of his mother's nest in a basement wall. At this point the story was enjoyable, if a bit dark. The rat hero of the novel then hooks up with an older male for a time, who teaches him how to survive, avoiding threats from four-footed and two-footed animals. Eventually he is left to make his own way in a warring society, where everything and everyone is menacing. He is led by his own relentless wanderlust to remain on the roam. At this point the story begins to deteriorate into a tedious repetitive cycle. Rat gets hungry, rat finds food and/or comfort, rat is threatened by something, terror drives rat to move on, rat gets hungry, etc. By the time the obligatory baby-getting-eaten-by-rats scene appeared, I was ready to rip up this book in disgust.

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