Rummaging through an odd rodent assortment

Barbara Hodgson opened every basement door, manhole cover, and ship’s hold to turn up these tidbits about rodents in literature and popular culture. Her material ranges widely and, other than treating on the title rodents, has little commonality. The book seems to collect everything people have written about rats. And that is what this book is really about: what people have written down, passed down, stored up, invented, imagined, and feared about rats. Hodgson’s miscellany builds up an image of rats as people have perceived and misperceived them over the centuries.

The Rat is about human reactions to these animals as icons; mostly negative but also sometime positive. We find how rats have been used to invoke mood and symbolize degradation, poverty, doom, and terror in numerous books, comics, and movies. We encounter little-known morsels about rats in societies around the globe. (Did you know there is a Jain temple where rats are worshipped?) There are rat tales from around the world and through history, with period illustrations on every page. Some entries may unsettle you; we are not spared the many ways rats have been killed. Other entries are cute; here are rats as storybook heroes. Others are simply gross; a rat king is not a rodent monarch but a bizarre phenomenon that I will leave for you to read about, if you care to.

Hodgson doesn’t interpret her collection. We readers are left to draw our own conclusions. This book may satisfy your curiosity, settle some bar bets on obscure movies, provoke you to research previously unheard of topics, or amuse you with rodent and human oddities and wonders. ( )

A good-quality, glossy-paged book with a potpourri of miscellaneous cultural, literary, and historical references to and illustrations of our favorite furry little rodent. Certain Amazon reviews describe this book as "creepy", but that assumes you have a bit of a rat phobia. Speaking as an enthusiast and admirer of these hardy and fascinating little creatures, most of the unpleasantness in this book comes from reminders of sad things that happen to rats. Though occasionally uncomfortable to read, if you are interested in rats, this book is worth it for the visuals alone - beautiful old woodcuts and rare rat illustrations. ( )