The Sorcery of White Rats: A Novel

I occasionally roll my eyes when authors get clever with describing the target audience for their books. Sometimes it genuinely is clever, and sometimes it’s just ridiculous. The Sorcery of White Rats is exactly what the author says it is, though: for “women in their twenties and everyone who remembers that terrible time”. Having just escaped my twenties, I have to admit that he’s right.

Not that my twenties were like those of Bristol and Monroe, who get wrapped up in apocalyptic prophecies. They are what my life could have been, but I was never able to follow that artistic path or make it to a big city. Instead I wound up in the suburbs, working retail and then childcare.

The vibes, though? Those ring true.

Bristol, Monroe, and their various supporting cast of artists and people hanging on the edge of what some might call “polite society” feel exaggerated, but not in an insulting or parodic way. They’re just stretched a little, brought up to 110% for the sake of making them jump off the page in places where perfect representations of young people might stumble or falter. They still feel real, and anyone who hung around artsy sorts in their twenties will recognize them.

Better still, their friendships feel real, and those are possibly the hardest things to capture about young women. Summing up the friendships of young women is an impossible endeavour, because we try to make that word cover so much territory, but Bertocci manages to show many sides to the multi-faceted, supportive, tense, difficult thing we sum up as “friendship”.

As for the rest, with the apocalyptic prophecy, the ancient ritual, and the attempts to save the world? It’s a wild ride that even I don’t know how to sum up. It’s an epic shrunk down to a reasonable size without losing anything, and a buddy comedy with weird twists and turns, and possibly a road trip story as well. It’s also a celebration of being in your early twenties, and I’m sure most readers will remember the conflicting attitudes of those years. The world is opening up around you, and at the same time there’s a chance it might come crashing down around your ears before you’re at all ready to deal with that.

I was delighted by this book and hope it’s just the first of many to come from Bertocci. This is a stunning debut and one that deserves to be a lasting favorite.