First published in Canada in 2016; published by St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books on January 24, 2017

Scruffy has been grieving the loss of John and Grace, causing him to enter a depressive self-destructive state, much to the consternation of everyone who knows him, particularly Nicole, his former girlfriend. Scruffy probably has a real name, but if Jay Hosking revealed it, I missed it. Scruffy calls Nicole Trouble and Nicole calls him Danger, but most of his friends seem to call him Scruffy if they use his name at all. Maybe the absence of an identity is meant to symbolize the illusory nature of reality that is (I think) the story’s point.

John was Scruffy’s good friend and Grace is Scruffy’s sister. Grace has been missing since 2006, although there have been some sporadic Grace sightings since then. John, after trying to harm himself, spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. Immediately after his discharge in 2007, he starts building a box. In 2008, John is also gone, and it falls to Grace’s brother to remove the box from their apartment. He also adopts Buddy, John’s lab rat.

There are mirrors on the walls inside the box and … well … other things. Scruffy reassembles the box and enters it. The experience is unpleasant. Eventually Scruffy’s life becomes unpleasant, or at least odd, as he enters a reality in which memory of his existence fades away.

The story bounces around in time, which seems appropriate since time plays a key role in the story. Grace and John were researching the difference between objective and subjective time. Once Scruffy starts messing around with their experiment in an attempt to rescue John and Grace, he finds himself in a reality that differs from the one he remembers.

Even if the shifting time frames sort of make sense in the framework of the story, the technique is usually used to bring different timelines together in a way that slowly reveals whatever the author has been concealing from the reader. Sometimes the technique works well, but in this story it contributes little more than confusion. The hidden fact (what happened to John and Grace?) could have been revealed with just as much impact, and probably more suspense, if the story had been told in a linear fashion.

Eventually — and it takes too long to happen — the novel morphs into a horror story melded with a science fiction story. It is an imperfect meld because the horror isn’t frightening and the science fiction builds rather unscientifically on concepts that been around for decades.

That doesn’t mean Three Years With the Rat doesn’t have entertainment value, but the slow development doesn’t lead to the big payoff that justifies investing so much time to get there. I found myself asking “But why?” at several places in the climactic scene, and never quite puzzled out the answer. Fortunately, Hosking writes smoothly and his agreeable prose style offsets some of the novel’s weaknesses. Still, I can only give Three Years with the Rat a qualified recommendation because too much of it makes too little sense.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Honestly, I'm not sure how to put in words what I felt about this book. It's complex, it's interesting and it will bend your mind into a pretzel. Not a whole lot happens in the book, but it was still a page-turner. The characters felt real. I especially loved Buddy and now want a pet rat. And I loved the setting- Toronto!

Three Years with the Rat by Jay Hosking is a highly recommended debut genre-bending novel about a young man looking for his sister.

The unnamed narrator in Three Years with the Rat is called by various nicknames, Grace's little brother, Scruffy by a friend, and Danger by his new Toronto girlfriend, Nicole (or Trouble.) When our narrator, an underachiever with no real life goals, moves to Toronto where Grace and John, her boyfriend, live, he meets their friends and is included in their social circle. Grace is graduate student in psychophysics. She and John are working on a project involving rats and "subjective time."

When John and Grace's landlord calls and wants him to clean out their apartment because they are gone, our narrator discovers in their apartment a handmade wooden box big enough to crawl inside and lined with mirrors, Buddy the rat, a notebook written in code, and a note that says: This is the only way back for us. Now he must unravel what they did and how to get them back. He knows that somehow Buddy can disappear and travel back and forth between wherever space the box leads to and where our narrator lives.

The narrative jumps back and forth in time over the three years in the title, 2006-2008, so readers will want to pay attention to what year they are in which is noted at the start of each chapter. That doesn't mean you will understand everything that is happening during that timeline, but eventually more and more information is revealed that will help you later. This shifting chronology makes the presentation feel fragmented, so you will have to overcome this as you are reading.

The novel itself has elements of science fiction, a mystery, suspense/horror, and magic realism. It is definitely not straight science fiction. The writing is good. Characters aren't as well developed as I prefer so I was never fully invested in what happens to them, and the dialogue is awkward. While the narrator seeks answers about where his sister and John went, he is also seeking answers about what happened with his relationship with Nicole, and he's trying to care for Buddy.

All this seems like I might rate Three Years with the Rat lower, but I was intrigued by the idea and was able to overlook some elements of the presentation to get to the end of the story. It's not fully resolved, but enough for closure. Additionally, I was eager to read what happened next and thought about Three Years with the Rat after I was finished with the novel. 3.5 rounded up.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of St. Martin's Press.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/01/three-years-with-rat.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1894970890

This is an pretty good novel that tries to present some heady, interesting ideas - it succeeds a trippy sci-fi kind of way, but doesn't always fully succeed in its presentation. The story alternates timelines and can sometimes leave you grasping a bit for exactly what is happening, but overall, I enjoyed reading it - I just wish that some of the ideas and presentation were a bit more fine tuned.

I started reading this book.
My first thought of this book was, what am I reading. The chapter sequences are not vivid enough. I had to look for them. Second, before I learned this, I thought the authors concepts of how he portrayed the characters ran a muck in this satire. Following this. I found it a good read so far. A man that literally has to find himself, and perhaps he does through the people in his life.
I would recommend this book to anyone, especially if your seeking a book that wants to understand how life really can be and the twist and turns it give us. And lastly how we overcome. Visit my Blog to read more, http://redrosesinpinkshoes.blogspot.com/

I'm not sure I can adequately review a book like "Three Years with the Rat." It is unlike anything I've ever read, and I suspect that someone with a more analytical mind would be able to fully appreciate its message.

Although I'd say about 65 percent of the time I had no idea what was going on, I was able to read this book fairly quickly because of the elements of suspense. It is truly a mind-bending story that challenges the reader's perception of reality.

My biggest complaint, regardless of my level of comprehension, is how much the story jumps around. I'm sure the author has a good reason for shifting constantly between the years of 2006 through 2008. Did he intend to generate an added layer of confusion? Who knows.

All that being said, the writing was good, the characters were intriguing, and the story moves quickly (once you get about halfway through, however). Science fiction just isn't my thing, so perhaps a seasoned lover of the genre will get more enjoyment from this book.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Three Years with the Rat, by Jay Hosking, covers some particularly dark themes, with the big one being suicide (and presumed suicide) and the way people respond and try to cope with that. The main character is rather fascinating, despite the fact that he’s the sort to curse a lot, rarely does what he is supposed to at the right time, and has a bit of a temper. But the further you get into the novel, the more you can grow to understand him.

I think that the main issue people might have is with not really understanding what is happening at times. The mixed up timeline helps keep the reader invested, trying to piece together the mystery. But it is hard for me to decide if this is Science Fiction, or Magical Realism, or something else entirely – or maybe both? I’ve listed it as both, above. Just in case. Hah.

It’s very introspective, dark and existential, but sometimes I found myself a bit lost. I think if it had been a bit clearer, I could have rated it higher. Sometimes the sentences were repetitive and a tiny bit awkward to read, but I get the feeling that it was done on purpose (at least in most cases?).

But at the same time, I think that sometimes things that aren’t clear are just as interesting, because they make the reader think. In this case, I’m basing it on my personal preference.

The timeline in the book doesn’t go in the order you expect it to, so be aware of the dates given at the start of the chapters if you want to really understand. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have at the beginning, and had to go back to make sure I understood. I think the partially inverted timeline is really interesting, though, as I don’t think I’ve seen a novel like this one before. It sort of jumps around, sometimes going backwards and sometimes hopping forward several years. It’s easy to tell the past from the present, however, as the writing tense changes.

I also really love the illustrations/cover art for this book. It sort of makes sense from the start, but of course is explained more fully within the text. It is also included within the book as section markers, and I just adore them. Perhaps it’s the part of me that loves science and social science experiments, but either way, bonus points for that cover. Hah!

(This review will be published at the CCLaP website [cclapcenter.com] on January 24th, 2017. For any questions concerning it, please contact Jason Pettus at cclapcenter@gmail.com.)

The promotional material for Jay Hosking's <i>Three Years with the Rat</i> claims that the novel is "reminiscent of Mark Danielewski's <i>House of Leaves</i>," but as typical with this kind of stuff, that's simply a lie; in fact the one and only thing the two books have in common is that they both feature a space that's bigger on the inside than on the outside. Other than that, this book consists of not much more than a fairly pedestrian coming-of-age tale, plotted with the immaturity of a Young Adult novel and featuring dialogue that badly suffers from Joss Whedon Syndrome*, a book that hits all the notes you would expect from such a story (boy moves to Big City, boy makes new group of friends, boy gets into first serious romantic relationship, boy breaks up from first serious romantic relationship), only with a metafictional element holding the story spine together, in that it's the boy's older sister who convinces him to move there, and she and her boyfriend are both scientists who are working on some kind of shadowy project that supposedly supersedes the normal laws of space and time.

That's led St. Martin's Press to unwisely market this as a science-fiction novel, or at least a literary novel with strongly science-fictional overtones (thus the <i>House of Leaves</i> comparison on the dust jacket); but actual SF fans like myself will be disappointed by <i>Three Years with the Rat</i>, not only because the science part is dished out in such a poorly paced, haphazard way (smart readers can essentially glean everything they're trying to do in chapter 1, then the rest of the novel is a series of flashbacks where Hosking tries to slowly reveal the very information he fully showed in the first chapter), but because the eventual "science" that's revealed sounds literally like something a stoned undergraduate would come up with after a bullshit session in the dorm with their buddy**, then afterwards decide would make for a good subject off which to base an entire novel.

That's a huge problem here, because there's nothing compelling left once you discount the disappointing concept at the center of the book; and when combined with the immature writing style that's clearly being presented as something for grown-ups, that makes for a book that's hard to recommend and kind of a slog to actually read. I'm tacking on a few extra points to its score today anyway, as an acknowledgement that teens and Whedon fans will undoubtedly like this more than I did; but make no mistake, despite what St. Martin's is trying to peddle here, <i>Primer</i> this ain't.

Out of 10: <b>7.3</b>

*Joss Whedon Syndrome: When dialogue supposedly meant for grown-ups is written in an overly twee and flippant style, which some people apparently like for some unfathomable reason, but for me is like fingernails down a chalkboard.

**"Dude, you know how, like, time seems to stand still when you're waiting in line at the grocery store? <i>What if it actually does?</i>" "Awww, duuuude." "And what if, like, you could control that time speed by putting six mirrors together directly across from each other in a cube, so that they're, like, all infinitely mirroring each other?" "Awww, <i>duuuuuddde!</i>" "And what if, like, what if you sat in the middle of that mirror cube, and like your entire past ceased to exist because of it, so then you could go back to your ex-girlfriend and undo all the dick moves that made her break up with you the first time?" "Stop, dude, stop! <i>YOU'RE FREAKING ME OUT, DUDE!!!</i>"

Very interesting read! Looking forward to reading more books by this author!