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.
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[Go away. Go to hell - rat!]***
(Ecco Press, 4 June 2019, ebook, 416 pages, Around the Year in 52 Books 2019, a book related to one of the 12 zodiac Chinese animals, ARC from @4thEstateBooks via # NetGalley)
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JCO has done it again and written an incredible book. This is based on a story she wrote years ago, Curly Red. I've read the story and this novel is a clear expansion of the events in the story. I felt incredibly sad for Violet. She is just a child and everything that happens is not her fault but the fault of adults she inadvertently confesses to who take control and set events in motion. The way her family especially her father treat her is despicable. She is 12 years old, still a child and is not responsible for what happens to her brothers. I wanted to give her parents a good slap. The book focuses on Violet's life after the arrest of her brothers and her exile. She seems designed for terrible things as she becomes the victim of trauma again and again. This is heart-breaking especially as she feels she deserves what happens for ratting out her brothers. She shows so much strength. Violet is almost thirty at the end of the book and a reunion with her family take a shocking yet not unexpected turn. My Life as a Rat is a corker. I loved it.
