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| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Ecco Press |
Publication date | June 4, 2019 |
| Pages | 416 |
| ISBN | 978-0-06-289983-5 |
My Life as a Rat is a novel by American writer Joyce Carol Oates, published by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins, on June 4, 2019. It follows the life of Violet Rue Kerrigan, who is disowned from her family at the age of 12 after she reveals that her brothers were responsible for the murder of an African American teenager.
Beginning in 1991, My Life as a Rat follows the life of Violet Rue, the seventh and youngest child of the Irish Catholic Kerrigan family in the fictional upstate New York town of South Niagara. After a local African American teenager, Hadrien Johnson, is killed, Violet reveals that two of her older brothers, Jerome, Jr. and Lionel, were involved in his murder. Both brothers are sent to prison for manslaughter.
As a result, Violet is ostracized by her family and sent to live with her mother's sister, Aunt Irma, and her husband, Uncle Iver. There, Violet suffers sexual abuse at the hands of her math teacher, Mr. Sandman, and Uncle Iver. After graduating from high school, she begins working as a maid and enters a toxic relationship with her client, Orlando Metti. During this time she is also enrolled in college courses.
Violet's relationship with Orlando ends, and she runs away, enrolling as a student in a state university. There, she becomes reacquainted with Tyrell Jones, who had also been a student in Mr. Sandman's math class, and is now a graduate student. Violet and Tyrell begin a healthy relationship.
Violet's father dies and she returns to South Niagara, where she hopes to reunite with the surviving members of her family. Lionel, who has been released from prison, attempts to murder Violet, and Violet returns to her life with Tyrell.
An early version of My Life as a Rat was Oates' short story "Curly Red," originally published in Harper's Magazine in 2003. The story was later republished in the 2004 short story collection I Am No One You Know. [1]
When asked about her decision to make the story a novel, Oates said, "I had long meditated upon the life of a girl who had impulsively blurted out the truth under duress, within a few seconds assuring her clannish family will reject her...Over the years I'd accumulated many notes and scenes, and I had always known how Violet's story would develop." [1]
My Life as a Rat was first published in the United States by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins, on June 4, 2019. [2]
Critical reviews of My Life as a Rat were mixed. A critic for Kirus Reviews wrote, "Oates explores the long echoes of violence born of sexism and racism in one young woman's like in this deft psychological thriller." [2] Pamela Miller of the Star Tribune called the novel "a near-masterpiece" and "a gripping coming-of-age story, at turns horrifying, heartbreaking, poignant and buoying." [3]
Julie Scheeres of The New York Times criticized the novel's plot, writing, "After a while, Violet's trajectory seemed predictable, her torturous penance too prolonged. I kept hoping for a Lisbeth Salander moment, when she'd start punching the world back." [4]
Barbara Gowdy, CM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Born in Windsor, Ontario, she is the long-time partner of poet Christopher Dewdney and resides in Toronto.
Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Carolyn Heilbrun was an American academic at Columbia University, the first woman to receive tenure in the English department, and a prolific feminist author of academic studies. In addition, beginning in the 1960s, she published numerous popular mystery novels with a woman protagonist, under the pen name of Amanda Cross. These have been translated into numerous languages and in total sold nearly one million copies worldwide.
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Ecco is a New York–based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquired by HarperCollins, with Halpern remaining at the head. Since 2000, Ecco has published the yearly anthology The Best American Science Writing, edited by Jesse Cohen. In 2011, Ecco created two separate publishing lines, one "curated" by chef-author Anthony Bourdain and the other by novelist Dennis Lehane.
Raymond Joseph Smith was an American educator, author, and book editor. He was for more than 30 years the editor of Ontario Review, a literary magazine, and the Ontario Review Press, a literary book publisher. He was married to the American author Joyce Carol Oates.
Blonde is a bestselling 2000 biographical fiction novel by Joyce Carol Oates that presents a fictionalized take on the life of American actress Marilyn Monroe.
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The Sacrifice is a 2015 novel by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. Set in blighted urban New Jersey in the 1980s, it follows a young Black woman, Sybilla, who is discovered in a degraded condition in an abandoned factory after going missing. When she alleges that she was kidnapped, assaulted, and left for dead by a group of white police officers, her cause is taken up by an ambitious and unscrupulous civil rights activist and his lawyer brother, despite evidence of deceit in her story. The events of the novel are based on the real-life Tawana Brawley case, and takes place in a part of New Jersey still suffering from the aftermath of post-war deindustrialization and the 1967 Newark riots.
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