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Ratcatcher
Ratcatcher is a story about addiction, self loathing, squalor and hedonism. It explores the psyche of an individual doing fuck all with his life, existing in a world that doesn't want him. Smiley is a young man living in a small town in industrial England. When he finds a new fling one night, he is drawn into a psychic world he never knew was there, a dark underbelly hiding in plain sight.
97 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 28, 2021
About the author
Dylan Davies
11 books1 followerDylan Davies is an Australian writer whose works explore psychological and philosophical musings in a macabre and bizarre nature.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 12, 2023
How can one aestheticize “rancidness”? This sensibility is so far removed from what our artistic palates are used to relishing, and though there have been writers (Hubert Selby, Jr., Gabrielle Wittkop, Ian McEwan) who have achieved a kind of rococo explosion of rot, the sublimity of which CAN feel like beauty, these authors are few and far in between.
Ratcatcher is not a perfect story. I found the way the plot and its elements developed was a bit messy at times, though things did conclude in a satisfying enough way. However, I am not here to praise Dylan’s ability to weave a story. I am here to express the utter awe I am in by the way this author forces atmosphere to a frenetic stop, all of its movements congealed in the anxious sweat of a world that is stuck and gathering rot and abscesses. The author mentioned to me that he lives in the most isolated city in the world, and though this tidbit of info barely registered with me at the time, it remained prostrated at my mind’s eye the more I was pulled into the inert and mutedly agonizing world of his writing.
Things in this story barely move. Even thought and memory are worked as physical substances prone to decay and erosion. Everything feels unwell, not in a way that overwhelms, but rather quietly settles even in the deepest, most pained part of the bones.
Read this if you want to be captivated by a truly unique narrative voice—and I mention “captivity” here in its most brutal sense. It is a suffocating, suppurating read.
Ratcatcher is not a perfect story. I found the way the plot and its elements developed was a bit messy at times, though things did conclude in a satisfying enough way. However, I am not here to praise Dylan’s ability to weave a story. I am here to express the utter awe I am in by the way this author forces atmosphere to a frenetic stop, all of its movements congealed in the anxious sweat of a world that is stuck and gathering rot and abscesses. The author mentioned to me that he lives in the most isolated city in the world, and though this tidbit of info barely registered with me at the time, it remained prostrated at my mind’s eye the more I was pulled into the inert and mutedly agonizing world of his writing.
Things in this story barely move. Even thought and memory are worked as physical substances prone to decay and erosion. Everything feels unwell, not in a way that overwhelms, but rather quietly settles even in the deepest, most pained part of the bones.
Read this if you want to be captivated by a truly unique narrative voice—and I mention “captivity” here in its most brutal sense. It is a suffocating, suppurating read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review