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 long estrangement.
Arresting and poignant, My Life as a Rat traces a life cast away from familyand from parents, siblings, and the Churchthat forces Violet to discover her own identity, to break the powerful spell of family, and to emerge from her long banishment as a rat into a transformed life.
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 long estrangement.
Arresting and poignant, My Life as a Rat traces a life cast away from familyand from parents, siblings, and the Churchthat forces Violet to discover her own identity, to break the powerful spell of family, and to emerge from her long banishment as a rat into a transformed life.
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"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." - Publishers Weekly
"Oates explores the long echoes of violence born of sexism and racism in one young woman's life in this deft psychological thriller." - Kirkus Reviews
"A beautiful and frightening novel, even with its gaps and liberties taken, it leaves readers with a sorrow and a cautious hope for Violet's survival." - Bookreporter.com
"This is a gripping coming-of-age story, at turns horrifying, heartbreaking, poignant and buoying. Now in her late 70s, she is at the height of her powers, and America has never needed her piercing observations more than it does now." - Toronto Star
"Oates explores the long echoes of violence born of sexism and racism in one young woman's life in this deft psychological thriller." - Kirkus Reviews
"A beautiful and frightening novel, even with its gaps and liberties taken, it leaves readers with a sorrow and a cautious hope for Violet's survival." - Bookreporter.com
"This is a gripping coming-of-age story, at turns horrifying, heartbreaking, poignant and buoying. Now in her late 70s, she is at the height of her powers, and America has never needed her piercing observations more than it does now." - Toronto Star