We Could Be Rats: A Novel

(Paperback, Local Edition)

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A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imaginationfrom the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrids inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrids detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. Shes haunted by the pains of her pastfrom pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Gretas friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.

Reviews

"Emily Austins 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 sorecognizable and so intimately detailed.We Could Be Ratsisa 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."LAURIE FRANKEL, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is
"We Could Be Ratsis 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."HALEY JAKOBSON, New York Times Editors Choice author of Old Enough
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.NATALIE SUE, internationally bestselling author of I Hope This Finds You Well
"We Could Be Rats is 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 Austins 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. Its Alice Monro for depressed lesbians, and it made me weep before it gave me a hug." MARISSA HIGGINS, author of A Good Happy Girl
"Austin chronicles the complicated relationship between two sisters in her nuanced latest...[A] distinctive character portrait.."Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

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 collectionGay Girl Prayers. She was born in Ontario, Canada, and received two writing grantsfrom 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.