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WE COULD BE RATS

Emily Austin

From the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space, this is a novel about a moving story of two very different sisters, told in attempts at a suicide note, in a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination.

Sigrid really doesn't want to inconvenience anyone upon the discovery of her suicide note. She understands and appreciates the gravity of a young person's death, but she just couldn't bring herself to accept the realities of growing up and leaving behind the blissful comfort of childhood when she could always escape into her imagination. As a 21-year-old Dollar Pal employee who barely graduated high school, living in the small town she was never able to escape, there's not much for Sigrid to do to pass the time besides running the streets with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who truly understands her. She was never so close with her older sister Margit, who cares way more for other people than Sigrid ever could, and is no doubt the favorite child in her parents' eyes, and Sigrid's. After many attempts to perfect her suicide note, the root of Sigrid's inner turmoil becomes more clear, from dodging the swamp monsters her parents become when they shake the floor boards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta's friendship to the all to real epidemic ravaging their town and the people within it. As Margit comes to terms with everything Sigrid held so close to her chest, the only way forward is to remember the few days that shine through with joy amongst the many that didn't, to reach out to those who cared all along even when never asked, and to reignite that unparalleled feeling of delight when relishing in ones own childhood imagination, so easily forgotten amongst the pain and truths of today. Emily R. Austin is the author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Interesting Facts About Space, and the poetry collection, Gay Girl Prayers. She was born in Ontario, Canada, and received two writing grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts. She studied English literature and library science at Western University.

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Book Published 2025-01-01 by Atria Books

Comments

A darkly funny and tender look at the wonders of childhood imagination, the loss of innocence, and the distinct and often inescapable bonds of sisterhood. Austin has a gift for creating characters so real with insights so uniquely personal that they live in my heart long after the final page.

We Could Be Rats is achingly true to life in all its ugly, gorgeous, and stupidly funny complexities. Emily Austin has written a tender exploration of grief, sisterhood, and what it is to be a bit wobbly in a world that demands you get your footing. No one blends humor and existentialism quite like AustinWe Could Be Rats is a must read.

Sigrid works a small job at the Dollar Pal in a small town called Drysdale as she plans her death by suicide. Austin's (Interesting Facts about Space, 2024) third novel features sisters trying to find truth and connection. Twenty-one chapters are called "attempts," both a reference to suicidality and to the challenge of figuring out what to say. The second section is Sigrid's sister's "truth." And the final section provides revelations about Sigrid's identity and her whys. The sisters grew up in a house of violent arguments. Sigrid tries to explain her childhood to her sister and the importance of her best friend, whom she lost in adulthood, by lying, then confessing, then lying and confessing again and again. Easily readable in clear sentences that try to recapture youthful imagination, toy worlds in a basement, and a Barbie doll abandoned in the woods, this novel is a compelling experience in reaching and reclaiming.

For the townies, the freaks, the dykes, the dropoutsall of us who think the world would be better if we evaporated, if we traded working at the Dollar Pal and hating ourselves for living the good life as rodents at a carnival. Emily Austin's signature dark humor and sharp observations into the human condition grip and entertain while a series of suicide notes unravel the truths behind addiction, bitter family fights, and anonymous bomb threats against a certain conservative politician in small town Canada. There are no caricatures here, just me, you, and everyone we know. It's Alice Monro for depressed lesbians, and it made me weep before it gave me a hug.

Emily Austin's latest is a masterclass in voice, unreliable narrators, and unknowable characters you get to know anyway because their small town and weird family and struggles with the world are so recognizable and so intimately detailed. We Could Be Rats is a one-sitting-read portrait of the complicated relationship between two sisters, unusual but familiar, moving but difficult, and, ultimately, the light in the darkness they each and we too so badly need.