We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin: book review
TW: this whole book is about a suicide attempt and the aftermath
Overview: The first half of the book chronicles twenty-one labeled attempts at writing a suicide note. Sigrid is grappling with why she has to die and establishing she is the most unreliable of narrators. Some of these notes are addressed to her sister, Margit. Others are to her former best friend Greta. Even when she isn't directly writing to them, you get the sense they are the intended audience. Sigrid is very paranoid about not making the note too much of a downer, and surprisingly, for a book about suicide, the humor, sarcasm, and snark are defining features as well as a wistful view of childhood. I'd tell you what happens in the second half, but that would give away some of the major twists and turns. Overall: 4
Characters: 4 Sigrid copes with humor. That's immediately obvious. The beginning of the book establishes Sigrid's voice through the letters as well as her character through the variety of memories she chooses to share. They also include a number of details that the second half of the book spends deconstructing and putting into new light. Sigrid is twenty, a high school drop out after her older sister was the first in the family to go to college. She works at Dollar Pal and lives in a rented basement. Adulthood is not what she'd been promised, and despite growing up in an abusive household, Sigrid has fond memories of her childlike worldview and feels an irreconcilable grief at what it means to be an adult. Throughout the book, we also get to know Margit quite well. She never had Sigrid's childlike wonder as the hyper vigilant older sibling trying to hold everything together. And, after Sigrid ends up in the hospital after her attempt, she's still the one who keeps everything moving.
A lot of Sigrid's character is defined by wanting to return to childhood. Even as she entered her teenage years, she was resistant to her changing body, to the idea that she needed to give up playing with toys. She had a very active imagination as a child, making up elaborate storylines for her dolls. She never found a way to channel that creativity after playing with toys was no longer tenable. Through a series of unfortunate events, she fails high school English and ends up at Dollar Pal, not escaping her small, homophobic town or her parents like she'd hoped. She's also seen worse outcomes than her own as her childhood best friend and lifeline, Greta, ends up addicted to opioids, a prevalent problem in the town. Sigrid struggles to grapple with the injustices of the adult world and ultimately decides she doesn't want to be a part of it. I related to Sigrid's struggle to accept adulthood a lot. I too played with dolls for longer than the average person and was lucky to find that writing stories in Microsoft Word scratched a similar itch as I became a teenager. But I also felt a deep sense of despair that I had to leave childhood behind. This is one of those books that I appreciated reading it now but two or three years ago, I think it would've made a huge impact on me because this is a conflict that I honestly haven't seen mirrored in many books. I'm not like Sigrid in a lot of ways (as the older sibling, there was a lot about Margit I related to as well), but we share that fundamental conflict. I guess reading it from a different spot in my life allows me to transfer some hope to Sigrid that it does get easier to stomach.
The book's other primary theme is sisterhood. Sigrid and Margit weren't very close growing up and don't become close in adulthood, and Sigrid's attempt forces them to reconcile that to a certain degree. Sigrid often reflects that she was told they'd become closer as adults but it never happened. I really appreciate sibling stories that don't necessarily reflect that best friend dynamic. They learn how to support each other on terms they're both comfortable with. I think this book will strike a cord, too, with anyone who's dealt with a difficult family situation, especially since 2016, where you can't reconcile these people you're family with who have such abhorrent beliefs. Sigrid at one point mentions how her mom thinks she must be lying about being gay because her mom is so unable to see past her own perspective that she sees the only reason someone would do that was for attention. Her empathy is limited. I thought that was such an interesting observation on how people are able to hold such warped worldviews. But another major thread of the book is Sigrid feeling estranged from her family for these reasons and reckoning with that.
Plot: 4 For being a book about a very intense and serious subject, it reads pretty lighthearted. Sigrid makes a lot of joke and infuses humor into the dark situation, and the letters mostly focus on recounting memories. Some of these are sad, but a lot of them aren't. I think the letters format was effective overall, and as the book progressed, it allowed Austin to introduce tension without having it be driven by whether Sigrid would survive or through sensationalizing the attempt. Instead, the letters start to contradict themselves, and the unreliable narrator element becomes quickly apparent. At the end of the letters, there's another major twist that throws their entire contents into a new light. Then, we end with a section of Sigrid's journal that the psychiatrist suggests she keep that further clarifies details and doubts and does a good job of wrapping up the book and concluding the growing up journey Sigrid has taken.
Writing: 4 The book is fast paced and easy to read. Austin deals with intense topics with grace. She's respectful of them but also realistic and isn't afraid to be a bit irreverent when appropriate. There's a lot of sensitivity here as the book centers around a suicide attempt in theory but is not gratuitous with details or even time on the page devoted to its discussion. It's largely about various childhood memories and how growing up is really hard, and no one talks about that, making it extremely isolating. The chapters are short and further segmented within chapters, and the format works nicely for delivering a story of this nature.
Having read Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead prior to this, I've realized that Austin is one of those authors with a pocket. Maybe she'll deviate someday, but so far, she's done a good job writing on similar themes with characters who share a lot in common but giving them fresh and unique takes. So, if you enjoyed one of these books, you'll probably like the others. For those who haven't read Someday Be Dead, the book also features a lesbian main character. In this one, she ends up accidentally working at a church when she really walked in pursuing free therapy, and this is a grave oversimplification, but working at the church helps her find a new spark with life again. The book grapples, similarly but much more centrally than Rats, with religion and religion and queerness. It's one of those books that I've definitely appreciated more in hindsight. But I always admire authors that can take what fans loved about a previous work and deliver something that will land in the same way while approaching from a unique angle that still feels fresh.
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