Penguin Random House, August 9, 2016.
Four Stars
Three Years
with the Rat is the story of an unnamed narrator who
is dealing with the loss of his sister and, soon after, her boyfriend – both Grace
and John have disappeared suddenly, leaving only a few ominous clues to their
whereabouts. When the narrator goes to their apartment to clean it out, he
finds a former lab rat named Buddy, a mysterious human-sized box, and a note
that says “This is the only way back for us.” If he can figure out the
connection between them, these may be the clues he needs to find his sister and
his friend, in whatever dimension they have disappeared into.
Meanwhile, the novel flashes back to several years previous,
when the narrator has just arrived in Toronto and joined his sister’s circle of
friends. He meets troubled chef Nicole, and they begin a rocky yet passionate relationship,
marred by Grace’s disapproval. Grace starts to push everyone away, beginning
with Nicole and ending with her own boyfriend John. While she has always been
acerbic, her moodiness is now veering into sudden rages, mainly directed at
John. When she goes missing, John becomes a prime suspect due to their
tumultuous relationship.
Grace is a grad student in the field of psychophysics
– the branch of psychology that deals with physical stimuli and its effects on
our mental perceptions. Grace and John’s experiments with Buddy and their
mysterious box are an exploration of alternate dimensions, and as the narrator
plays with these elements, his own reality begins to change. The novel
questions the nature of time and its adaptability, as well as considering the
alternative selves that we all carry within us – the choices we make and the possibilities
of what could have been.
This subject matter is clearly very ambitious, and it
is treated well by Hosking, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience. However, the plot
was often bogged down by scientific asides, which made it not as exciting as it
could have been, considering the subject matter. It’s difficult not to compare
it to a similar novel that was published this summer – Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter. While that novel was more
pop-culture speculative fiction, this one has more authentic science, but it is
at the expense of plot and character. Three
Years with the Rat is intellectually stimulating, but it doesn’t always
ring true on a human level – the characters are undeveloped and lacking in
realism. I still really enjoyed this novel, and it definitely made me think.
I received this novel from Penguin Random House and
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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