We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin
Reviewed by Naomi MacKinnon
I have read and loved all three of Emily Austin’s books. All are written with a queer, neurodivergent young protagonist who is real and raw and hurting, but who is also endearing and trying so hard to love the world and find her place in it.
As much as I loved Austin’s first two novels (Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space), I thought We Could Be Rats was brilliant. Austin had me thinking it was one thing when really it was something completely different. More than once.
Similar to Austin’s previous protagonists, Gilda and Enid, Sigrid is trying so hard to be happy. She wants the world to be a joyful place full of happiness and kindness and pink, fluffy clouds. But she’s learning the hard way that it’s not like that. At least, not always. Sometimes your sister scolds you and your parents fight and your father makes racist remarks and your family wants to vote for a bad person who believes libraries should be defunded and you lose your favourite toy and you fail school and you feel dumb and you lose your very best friend. Worst of all, you don’t know what to do about any of it.
“I’m not sure there is a way to be alive without upsetting people. We’re all in this web together, aren’t we? Everything we do tangles everybody else together.”
Austin has included an ‘Author’s Note’ at the beginning of the book to caution readers that this book deals with suicide. At first, it does this in a way that seems trivial. But there is a method to her madness that I thought was very effective.
Sigrid is worried her death will “bum” her family out, so she is trying to “cheer” them up a bit by leaving just the right suicide note. She writes out many attempts at notes through which the reader learns a lot about who she is and the kind of relationship she has with each member of her family.
Upon being found, Sigrid wants her phone and computer disposed of without anyone looking at her search history. She asks her family to consider keeping her death a secret from “old people” so as not to trouble them. She asks to be tossed in the landfill if a funeral is too expensive. She waited until it wasn’t so close to her mom’s birthday, and until after the election, so she could vote. Furthermore, she also waited until after Christmas because she had already drawn a name for Secret Santa and didn’t want that person to be left out. She makes a bunch of “lousy” confessions: lying about having IBS; stealing $20 from her dad’s wallet; stealing merchandise from the Dollar Pal where she works; lying about the lesbian porn her aunt found on her computer and blamed her boyfriend for. And she apologizes profusely for the cost and inconvenience of her suicide. Growing up has been hard for Sigrid. And she has experienced trauma in her life that hasn’t been dealt with.
“I think dying is less scary than growing up. I’d rather die than grow up to be a shitty person.”
The portrayal of Sigrid and her sister is painful, complicated, and beautiful. I know from my own experience that sisters can take each other for granted; we sometimes assume the other will always be there if we need them then continue our lives without paying enough attention. The love between sisters is not always evident until it is, and then it can be mighty. Like the structure of this book: it’s not clear that the book is about sisters at all, until it is, and then it’s powerful.
We Could Be Rats—quite unexpectedly--touched my heart and made my world a bit more beautiful.
“I used to joke, “I wish we were rats” because, if I could choose how the world worked, we would all be rats at a fair. We would all live well, sampling every possible ounce of happiness. We would roll around in garbage and suck on sour keys.
About the Author
Emily Austin is the author of We Could Be Rats, 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. She currently lives in Ottawa, in the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
About the Reviewer
Naomi MacKinnon lives in Nova Scotia with her husband, three kids, a dog, three cats, and a bunny. She works in the children's department at the beautiful Truro Public Library, where she loves to read all the picture books and play with the puppets. She blogs about (mostly) Canadian and Atlantic Canadian books at Consumed by Ink. https://consumedbyink.ca
Book Details
Publisher: Scribner Canada (January 28, 2025)
Length: 256 pages
ISBN13: 9781668085516
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