Rat tales

Firmin the rat, has a human passion for books and soon develops a relationship with a rather peculiar authoru00a0u00a0u00a0

Firmin
by Sam Savage, published by Hachette
Price: Rs 295

FIRMIN the rat, similar to his movie counter part Remy, has a human passion, this one for books and soon develops a relationship with a peculiar author.



Firmin is a rat, but he's one of the smartest guys you'll ever meet. He lives in the basement of a bookstore in Scollay Square, a section of Boston's once-infamous "entertainment" district, which succumbed to urban renewal in the 1960s. While the wiping-out of this area is the backdrop of this book, its central theme is the life of this intelligent rat. Though there's much that's sad and disgusting here, the super-witty rat had me smiling right through and even laughing aloud once or twice.

As you might expect, Firmin devours books. Unexpectedly, however, he soon discovers a remarkable relation, a kind of "pre-established harmony", between the taste and the literary quality of a book. "Good to eat is good to read" becomes his motto. He reads more books, and faster, than anyone you can imagine.u00a0

Firmin loves all stories. The only literature he cannot abide is rat literature, including mouse literature. He despises good-natured old Ratty in The Wind in the Willows; he pisses down the throats of Mickey Mouse and Stuart Little. Affable, shuffling, cute, they stick in his craw like fish bones. I suppose he might have been more tolerant of Ratatouille; Remy had similar experiences and ambitions of his own, but that was way after Firmin's time.

Firmin's first relationship with a human, the bookstore assistant, is a big disaster but later he is adopted by an eccentric writer Jerry Magoon and they have much in common Jerry is apparently so lonely he would talk to a rat.

Now Firmin could read, but no way could he write. He went and learned all he could about typewriters but had to conclude, "I knew that I was never going to hear the bright ping of accomplishment at the end of a line or the long applauding scrape of the carriage slamming back to start another" (an example of Firmin's flippant wit and flair for language).

Life is short, observes Firmin the wise, but still it is possible to learn a few things before you pop off one of the fundamentals being that when you are small, it is not enough to be a genius. And isn't it practically an axiom in psychiatry that precocious intellect combined with physical weakness can give rise to many unpleasant character traits avarice, delusions of grandeur, and obsessive masturbation, to name just a few?

Alongside the lighthearted banter that constructs for us a clear picture of Firmin's rather debonair if solitary personality, there are two tragic themes that pervade the book. One is Firmin's essential loneliness, and his stark ugliness that sadly makes him unlovable and therefore increasingly alone. The other is the thin line that separates the experience we gain through real life events from the experience we gain from what we feel and think when we read: Firmin's real encounters occasionally overlap in an artistically carelessly manner with his imagined ones.

Both these are themes that many of us will easily relate to.

Firmin may only be a rat but then his creator, Sam Savage, just happens to have bachelor and doctoral degrees in Philosophy from Yale University.