My Life as a Rat: A Novel

Written by Joyce Carol Oates

Narrated by Sadie Alexandru

“A painful truth of family life: the most tender emotions can change in an instant.  You think your parents love you but is it you they love, or the child who is theirs?”  --Joyce Carol Oates, My Life as a Rat

Which should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one’s family ever justified?  Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it?

My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age twelve, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.

Arresting and poignant, My Life as a Rat traces a life of banishment from a family—banishment from parents, siblings, and the Church—that forces Violet to discover her own identity, to break the powerful spell of family, and to emerge from her long exile as a “rat” into a transformed life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780062917676

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories and one of America’s most respected literary figures. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

Reviews for My Life as a Rat

[ALAN FISHER · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

JCO has written a novel so dark, and, at times so bleak, I frequently questioned my choice to listen to it. By the end of the novel, I was totally swept away. Her ability to paint a colorful portrait of her characters in a most realistic and honest way engaged this listener. Increasingly, I could not wait to learn what would happen next, despite the general somber tone of the narrative. Violet Rue Kerrigan leads a Candidean existence; bad things happen to her yet she goes on, with both total awareness and total misreading of some of the consequences of her choices.
The narrator does an excellent job of guiding us. Highly Recommend.

[dwcofer_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For the most part, this was an enjoyable book to read. The prose flowed smoothly and it read quickly. Most of the chapters were short, some as short as a page or two. There were a few very long chapters, but they contained breaks so you had a convenient place to stop if need be.The story is about Violet, who told the authorities about her brothers who savagely beat a black man to death. As a result of “ratting” on her brothers, she was ostracized from the family and shipped away to live with her mother’s sister. Prior to the story, Oates says the story appeared as a short story called “Curly Red” in Harper’s Magazine and it is contained in her short story collection “I Am No One You Know.” I wanted to read the short story first so I had an idea of how the novel would progress. The short story starts out similarly to the novel, but the ending is radically different. In the short story, Violet’s father finally forgives her on his hospital death bed. This is a very emotional scene and really the crux of the story. However, in the novel, her father dies in the parking lot of a bar and hardly a paragraph is used to mention his death. Violet is not with him when he dies and his death is treated just in passing. This is unfortunate, as the novel would have been much better off if Violet had had more closure with her father at the end.There are also a couple of sections of the novel that should have been omitted and the book would have been a tighter read. Part of the story is the encounters with her math teacher, Mr. Sandman, who drugs her and abuses her repeatedly. This section is not integral to the story as a whole and serves no purpose. It should have been left out.Also, Violet develops a relationship with a man whose home she is cleaning, Orlando Metti. Again, this seems to come out of nowhere, stops down the narrative arc of the story and was included just to pad the novel. The novel is 400 pages and if these two sections were removed, it would be a better length and a much better story. A couple of craft issues bothered me. There are several POV shifts from first to third and back to first person POV that were jarring and took me out of the story. Also there were tense changes from the past to the present and back to the past, even in the same paragraph. The story is told from Violet’s point of view, but there is some “head hopping” as we are told in the same paragraph what another character is thinking. I cannot imagine how these escaped an editor’s attention.Overall, the story, despite being too long, is a decent read which I do recommend.

[write5review · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Cost of Doing Right

Joyce Carol Oates has written volumes of fiction on family, race, womanhood, childhood. She has woven real-life events into powerful and enlightening novels, among them in recent years The Sacrifice and A Book of American Martyrs. Now, in her newest release, she takes on a subject in the news and touching every American, our national reversion to virulent tribalism. Correctly, as her novel points out, tribalism has always been with us in its most elemental form, the family. In the hierarchy of loyalty, so it goes, one is loyal first to family, next to country, and last to humanity in general. Mixed into tribal novel, adding texture, and often brutal reality, are the physical and sexual abuse and subjugation of women, the terror of childhood, and seemingly ineradicable racism. But JCO also finds hope here in the strength and independence of the individual. All this gets folded into one of her most put upon creations, Violet Rue Kerrigan. Quite a name, as readers will come to appreciate, for a young girl who manages to survive, and thrive, but never forget.

Violet Rue Kerrigan grows up in the Kerrigan clan of South Niagara, New York. She lives in a large immediate family, father Jerome, mother Lula, siblings in order, Jerome Jr., Miriam, Lionel, Les, Katie, Rick, and Violet. They live in a small house, a workingman’s house that Jerome takes special pride in keeping well tended, in contrast to his neighbors, located at 388 Black Rock St., South Niagara, New York, an address repeated often because the essence here is unity of and loyalty to family, no matter what, and the importance of home. The Kerrigans are a big clan that include all levels of success, all the way up to an old-style boss politician who wields considerable influence in the region. And Violet Rue’s Kerrigans are as traditional Irish Catholic as they come with a clear immutable division of male and female roles. Which is not to say that the women, particularly Lula, happily embrace their roles, but rather find themselves trapped in them by the yokes of force and money.

The novel opens with Violet Rue at twelve and the two older boys already defined as brutal troublemakers due to their abuse and rape of special needs student Liza Deaver, which for various reasons well known to anybody who follows situations like this, they get away with. They then go on to bigger crime. While out drinking and joy riding with a cousin and a friend, they come upon Hadrian Johnson, a classmate, a lettered athlete, riding his bike home in the dark. They hit him with their car and then proceed to beat him to death with a baseball bat. It’s a racial crime that gets turned on its head by the Kerrigans and the other whites in South Niagara as prejudice against the white boys. That is, until Violet Rue, having seen her bothers cleaning the murder weapon that they later bury near home, becomes so overwhelmingly traumatized, so sick, that she from the need to rid herself of the knowledge inadvertently reveals it in the school nurse’s office. This results in the imprisonment of her brothers Jerome, Jr. and Lionel and her ostracized from the family, sent off to live with an Aunt and her husband in Port Oriskany, a place JCO readers know well.

To this point, the men in Violet Rue’s life have been pretty bad and she has not only been traumatized by them, by their murderous ways, but also permanently separated from her immediate family. Now, when in her most vulnerable state, the men get much worse, in the forms of her aunt’s lewd husband; Mr. Sandman, a math teacher by day and a sexual abuser and neo-Nazi by night; and later Professor Orlando Metti, manipulative, and both emotionally cruel and abusive. Fact is, until near the end of the novel the only decent male in her life is the little French bulldog Brindle that Metti requires Violet to care for and then uses to callously torment her with. Through all of this, Violet Rue yearns to be with her family, hopes that her father will accept her again, and fears that her brothers, once released from prison, will not come looking for her with murder in their hearts.

And yet, through all this turmoil and torture, Violet Rue manages to survive. Not only survive, she finds strength in herself, she finishes college, she plans a future, and she meets a man from her past with whom, despite everything, she might have a relationship. And then there is her family, the fate of her brothers, the father and mother, her sisters, the house at 388 Black Rock St., South Niagara, New York. What happens to them, and to her relationship with them? It’s a difficult road for Violet Rue back to the street and whether she makes it back, and if she does what she may find. These are left up to the reader to discover on their own in this recommended novel about breaking from the tribe to do the right thing.

[brookiexlicious · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My favorite author has done it again! Ms. Oates has delivered another novel that is heartbreakingly raw and honest. She depicts a childhood in all of its naive and well meaning glory, and the worst of behaviors committed by your own blood. As beautifully written as this book was, there were certain passages that could be difficult to read for some. There are depictions of abuse, physical and sexual, and some of the main characters aren’t shy with their vulgarity. This is not a book of happy endings, but yet I was heavily invested in the story and the characters.

[maryreinert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is really the story of the family dynamics of a strong willed Irish Catholic family whose father is the unquestioned boss, the oldest sons following in his footsteps, and the women of the family working their lives around them. Violet is the youngest of the group and at the age of twelve unwittingly tells of what she knew of the racist murder committed by her two older brothers. Lionel the one brother "accidentally" pushes her to fall hard on the ice, she is then deemed in danger by social workers and is taken from the home. First in foster families and then to her aunt Irma who attempts to love and understand her.Violet's life is so totally uprooted by this trauma that she falls into more. First, a slimy math teacher assaults her; she believes that it is her fault and that she is a "dirty girl." Smart, but socially isolated, she seems to take one wrong road after another. Irma's husband soon becomes threatening and as she graduates, she leaves. Smart enough for a scholarship, she enrolls in college but works as a cleaning lady. Here she meets a much older man who also takes advantage of her. Throughout all her life, Violet feels an intense responsibility to the family of the young Black man that was killed by her brothers and sends them money on Valentine's Day. This is a sad book and one that is very believable. Once one's own self-esteem is ruined, it is difficult to make choices in your own self interest. The ending offers a glimpse of hope, but once again, there are some things in one's family that cannot be changed. The writing is good, the characters are believable, but the reader just gets the sense of looking into something that is ugly and vile.

[mercef_9 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first book I’ve read by Joyce Carol Oates and I’m quite pleased to say it’s not the biography of a rodent. In this case, it’s the Canadian term for a young girl who is abandoned by her family after she “rats” on them. Set in Niagara, it portrays a bleak picture of rednecks, racism and domestic violence. Will be looking out for more of this author’s work.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oates's writing style is truly unique, bucking many conventions while creating an engaging novel.

[delphimo_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Joyce Carol Oates creates a realistic novel about family relationships and family loyalty as the story of Violet Rue Kerrigan unfolds. At the age of twelve, Violet witnesses two of her brothers burying an object in the yard and then hears of tidbits of their harrowing journey. Violet releases her version of the event in confession and then betrays her family in relating to the police what she has seen and heard. Violet’s story convicts and sentences her brothers to prison for the beating of a 17-year-old African-American who dies from his injuries. The reader follows Violet in her trek away from her family after one brother beats her. Violet falls under the sadistic spell of a male math teacher who drugs her and takes pornographic pictures. This abruptly ends when the teacher overdoses Violet, but then another man enters the picture to torment Violet. The circle of Violet and the African-American community rotates full circle in Violet’s choice of a companion. The story shows the ups and downs of life, but mostly the downs. Love and understanding only filter very sparsely in the novel. Ms. Oates presents a thorough account of the events, but Violet’s feelings are sometimes omitted.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When Violet Rue Kerrigan is twelve, she comes downstairs in the middle of the night to hear a confusing conversation between two of her older brothers. It will be a few days before she puts together the pieces of a conversation about fixing a car and hiding a baseball bat with the murder of a black high school student. The Kerrigans are a large Irish family with an unpredictable father, whose moods are carefully monitored by the rest of the family, especially by Violet's mother and sisters. Her brothers are rapidly becoming as domineering and prone to violence, although they still defer to their father. As their family, along with the working class Irish Catholic community as a whole, draw together to protect the boys, Violet is feeling increasingly unsafe around her brothers, a fear she shares with a teacher in a vulnerable moment. That moment will shatter Violet's life.Joyce Carol Oates writes best when she's describing the experience of being a girl growing up in dysfunctional patriarchal households, of being unsafe and knowing that the very men that you love can easily do you great harm, and often do. With this novel, JCO is writing to her strengths and the result is a powerful and emotionally resonant novel about belonging, identity and resilience. I don't think I've ever read anything that so perfectly explains why an abused child will desperately try to return to the very environment that endangers her. JCO's singular writing style is perfectly suited to the voice of Violet Rue and while this isn't a novel that pulls any punches with what happens to children removed from whatever security they may have known and the battles Violet wages just to survive, she also tempers this all with grace notes and moments where Violet discovers that she's stronger than she thought she was. This may well be my favorite work by this author.

[miss.mesmerized · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“I was twelve years old. This was the morning of the last day of my childhood.”Violet Rue has always been her father’s favourite little girl. Just like her older sisters before, but not the brothers. The seventh of the children was loved beyond belief and treated differently. Jerome Kerrigan wasn’t an easy man, expecting his family to be obedient and to follow his orders. His education was strict and very clear. But then, one event changes everything. Her older brothers commit a cruel crime, killing a boy from the neighbourhood, a black boy. Violet Rue knows about it and she knows where the murder weapon is to be found. Keeping this secret is not really an option, but positioning herself against her family means that she has to life a life as a rat, a person who betrayed their closest. I have read several novels written by Joyce Carol Oates and thus knew that she does not make it easy for her readers and demands a lot. Here, too, the book at times is hard to tolerate, the family situation is shocking and what the girl experiences – also after leaving the family – is merciless, just like reality sometimes is. A very strong narration that especially could convince me due to the tone of the young narrator who is torn between a childish naiveté and the need to grow-up and care for herself far too early.It’s a novel about family bonds, family secrets, punishment, and all kinds of abuse. Powerfully Oates portrays how strong the core family members are sometimes linked and how the children and partners of abusive husbands sometimes keep silent just to secure their life. Violet knows as a young girl already what is right and what is wrong and that her decision to take the side of the victim will have severe consequences. But she – just like any child in a comparable situation – underestimates the hatred that people might show and how heartlessly her family is ready to cast her out. A book not especially pleasurable to read but surely not to miss either.

[beamis12 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Violet is only twelve when she looses those most important her life. The youngestt of seven, raised by a mother who makes it clear that girls don't matter, only the boys are important. When an act of violence occurs, Violet becomes privy to some information she wishes she didn't have. Racial bias, mysogeny, family truth, the bonds that break are all explored. When she can no longer hold the truth in, Violet does the unthinkable as far as her family is concerned, she tells the truth. Instant banishment.This is one intense book, difficult to read, dfficult to understand the actions of her mother. The first part is portrayed so realistically, almost seems like one of those documentary show that are so popular right now. The book goes further to show exactly how this incident, affects Violet throughout her life. Her life as a rat. The book changes points of view, tenses from 1st to 2nd to 3rd, mimicking the trials of Violet as she tries to figure out where she belongs, who she is, and who she is going to be. Sometimes her thoughts,meander almost the point of the surrealistic. How repeated violence ad banishment from ones own family causes a divide in the psyche. For thee most part this is well done, we do get the full impact of the tragedy,but I think sometimes less is more. Too much happens to one person, a person who is now afraid to tell, since the first time cost her so much. There are many sexual scenes, language issues, and again I think are cook have been left out. Still I did come to care about Violet and this kept me reading on. Hard not to root the young girl who must grow up in her difficult circumstances. I think you will root for her too.ARC from Edelweiss.