What do you think?
Rate this book
The Rat: A Perverse Miscellany
A full-color homage to everybody's favorite rodent, "The Rat" is packed with rat facts, rat fiction, rat lore, rat art, and more. Quick-paced and fun-to-read, this compendium explores the unsinkable rat in fables, folklore, novels, pulp fiction, and horror flicks.
- GenresAnimalsNonfiction
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
24 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Hodgson
26 books78 followersBarbara Hodgson is a book designer with a degree in archeology and a diploma in graphic design. She began her career in book design by working for Douglas & McIntyre, moving from freelance designer to art director prior to taking on freelance work for other publishers and ultimately forming the book-packaging company Byzantium Books with Nick Bantock in 1993.
Designing books led to writing books: Hodgson is the author of No Place for a Lady, Dreaming of East, and Italy Out of Hand, all published by Greystone Books, and several other highly praised non-fiction books. She is also the author of four acclaimed illustrated novels Lives of Shadows, Hippolyte’s Island, The Sensualist, and The Tattooed Map.
Hodgson’s books are unique in that they combine her writing with a multitude of illustrations of various types drawn from a wide range of sources, including engravings, lithographs, photographs, stereo-cards, postcards, movie stills, and pulp magazine and novel covers. These days, the flea market is the consummate collector’s primary source of research and inspiration.
Barbara Hodgson lives in Vancouver.
Designing books led to writing books: Hodgson is the author of No Place for a Lady, Dreaming of East, and Italy Out of Hand, all published by Greystone Books, and several other highly praised non-fiction books. She is also the author of four acclaimed illustrated novels Lives of Shadows, Hippolyte’s Island, The Sensualist, and The Tattooed Map.
Hodgson’s books are unique in that they combine her writing with a multitude of illustrations of various types drawn from a wide range of sources, including engravings, lithographs, photographs, stereo-cards, postcards, movie stills, and pulp magazine and novel covers. These days, the flea market is the consummate collector’s primary source of research and inspiration.
Barbara Hodgson lives in Vancouver.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 12, 2011
Plague-carrying black rats probably traveled home to Europe with the Crusaders. In any event, they arrived in Europe from Asia in the 12th century, about the same time as the plague. However, Hodgson points out later in the book that the first Europeans to die of plague were the victims of germ warfare. The besieging Tartars lobbed their dead over the walls of Genoa, infecting the defenders before they crawled off to die. Rats do not come into the story at all. Perhaps they were falsely accused?
A map lists the word for rat in languages around the globe, proving how widespread they are. The Japanese nezumi really means mouse (as I understand it), but perhaps the only signifies that Japan is one of the few places blessedly free of rats. Hodgson follows the map by relaying stories from around the world about the rodent at hand. One of the best is a listing of menu items from a restaurant in Canton: rat with chestnut and duck, lotus seed rat stew, deep-fried lemon rat… Later in the book, Hodgson quotes the biblical book of Leviticus, which defines rats as forbidden food. The culinary uses of rats could have rated an entire chapter, in my opinion. I found the illustrated menu of “Le Rat Mort” (a Parisian bar dissed by Oscar Wilde) very amusing, even if its namesake doesn’t appear in the cuisine.
In a way, the illustrations of the book are my favorite part. Ranging from the fairy tale illustrations of Doré to a netsuke of rats escaping a Japanese rat-catchers, from the covers of Marvel Comics to pen sketches from The Wind in the Willows, from Hieronymus Bosch’s “Temptation of St. Anthony” to luscious natural history plates, the pictures in this full-color book are worth the price of the high admission. In fact, Rosamond Purcell’s photos in themselves are one of the highlights of the book. She documents rats amongst the corpses of birds they’ve driven to the brink of extinction. Later the book includes her photo of a ratking from a museum in Holland. (A “ratking” is a circle of rats with their tales wound together in a knot. Apparently, this behavior is common in overcrowded warrens. The other rats will continue to feed members of the ratking even after they’re knotted together.) Another photo of a gnawed musical manuscript frames a rat skeleton. Any of these images would have provided a better (and much more intriguing) cover illustration than the murky photo of a rat in a drainpipe which adorns the book.
The rat embodies for us many sins: lust, cunning, and gluttony. Hodgson gathers together quotes from sources like H.P. Lovecraft, George Orwell’s 1984, Lautremont’s Maldoror, and H.G. Wells’ Food of the Gods, along with a number of mystery books that I was unfamiliar with. She also includes a filmography, but rather than tracking down all the movies herself, she resorts to quoting a couple of film guides. I found her lack of determination to flesh out her topic somewhat frustrating.
In fact, the main flaw with the book is that the material occasionally repeats itself. Tighter editing could have controlled this. Unfortunately, without a firm editorial hand, the book leaves a distinct feeling that it’s been padded. The cadged film reviews bear this feeling out.
Despite these defects, The Rat is filled with little treats and tasty information. If our furry little companion puts a twitch in your whiskers, I encourage you to check this book out.
This review is excerpted from Morbid Curiosity #3.
A map lists the word for rat in languages around the globe, proving how widespread they are. The Japanese nezumi really means mouse (as I understand it), but perhaps the only signifies that Japan is one of the few places blessedly free of rats. Hodgson follows the map by relaying stories from around the world about the rodent at hand. One of the best is a listing of menu items from a restaurant in Canton: rat with chestnut and duck, lotus seed rat stew, deep-fried lemon rat… Later in the book, Hodgson quotes the biblical book of Leviticus, which defines rats as forbidden food. The culinary uses of rats could have rated an entire chapter, in my opinion. I found the illustrated menu of “Le Rat Mort” (a Parisian bar dissed by Oscar Wilde) very amusing, even if its namesake doesn’t appear in the cuisine.
In a way, the illustrations of the book are my favorite part. Ranging from the fairy tale illustrations of Doré to a netsuke of rats escaping a Japanese rat-catchers, from the covers of Marvel Comics to pen sketches from The Wind in the Willows, from Hieronymus Bosch’s “Temptation of St. Anthony” to luscious natural history plates, the pictures in this full-color book are worth the price of the high admission. In fact, Rosamond Purcell’s photos in themselves are one of the highlights of the book. She documents rats amongst the corpses of birds they’ve driven to the brink of extinction. Later the book includes her photo of a ratking from a museum in Holland. (A “ratking” is a circle of rats with their tales wound together in a knot. Apparently, this behavior is common in overcrowded warrens. The other rats will continue to feed members of the ratking even after they’re knotted together.) Another photo of a gnawed musical manuscript frames a rat skeleton. Any of these images would have provided a better (and much more intriguing) cover illustration than the murky photo of a rat in a drainpipe which adorns the book.
The rat embodies for us many sins: lust, cunning, and gluttony. Hodgson gathers together quotes from sources like H.P. Lovecraft, George Orwell’s 1984, Lautremont’s Maldoror, and H.G. Wells’ Food of the Gods, along with a number of mystery books that I was unfamiliar with. She also includes a filmography, but rather than tracking down all the movies herself, she resorts to quoting a couple of film guides. I found her lack of determination to flesh out her topic somewhat frustrating.
In fact, the main flaw with the book is that the material occasionally repeats itself. Tighter editing could have controlled this. Unfortunately, without a firm editorial hand, the book leaves a distinct feeling that it’s been padded. The cadged film reviews bear this feeling out.
Despite these defects, The Rat is filled with little treats and tasty information. If our furry little companion puts a twitch in your whiskers, I encourage you to check this book out.
This review is excerpted from Morbid Curiosity #3.
March 4, 2010
No real new actual information gathered about rats, but I very much enjoyed and appreciated the extensive collection of quotes and referenced material, most of which was very much new to me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews