Rat Medicine:And Other Unlikely Curatives

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	• Rat Medicine: And Other Unlikely Curatives Lauren B. Davis Mosaic Press (NY), 1999 - 193 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A definite must read!

Rat Medicine was a book that I read, reread, and keep on hand to read again. It is amazing that the author has so many voices, so many stories, and it becomes difficult to decide which one you prefer...the young and fragile eight-year-old girl, the seemingly self-assured woman nipping sips from the liquor cabinet, the Irish mute in a land of magic, and so many others. Davis' stories are moving, witty, funny, insightful, and written with such wonderful detail that your imagination travels to numerous places and into the vast array of characters' minds. A wonderful gift for yourself or someone else, I thoroughly enjoyed and continue to enjoy her work.

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The heart of the matter

If you're looking for an easy, uplifting read, this isn't it. But if you're looking for something that will stimulate not only your mind but also and most especially your heart, pick this one up.

Lauren B. Davis's stories are not sentimental; they are powerful. They are not melodramatic; they are real. They are not ordinary;they strike at the heart of the matter.

Her characters are you and me, at different ages, in different places. All hurting and being hurt. Because of alcohol. With infinite compassion, loving patience and acute understanding, Davis paints the pain, the loss, the violence in such colors and strokes that we find, beyond despair, ultimately, what it means to be human.

Rat Medicine, a stretching experience.

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A book to be read and reread

Review Lauren Davis' Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives is an astounding collection of twenty stories that slowly work upon the mind and the imagination of the reader. Timothy Findley is right in saying, "Here lies buried treasure." These stories deserve to be read and still more they deserve to be reread. That's where the treasure is, where the rat medecine starts to work, where the spirits "draw golden circles." From the first story, Rat Medecine, where Nell sees rats sitting on the windowsill, inside the refrigerator, to the last story, The Golden Benefactors, where Brewster sees spirits hovering around their living kin like grand moths, the author is the alchemist, burning through the dregs of human nature to sift out the nuggets of gold. Nell will turn the tables on her booze-ridden husband, Brewster will share his secret with little Liam. The prose mesmerizes, the reader enters the underworld, following Ms.Davis' characters as they lose themselves in alcohol, drugs, sex, and violence - heads exploding in starbursts of yellow and red lights. The stories hurt, the bleakness is invasive. But scattered throughout the collection there are indeed starbursts of light, the stray twin sister Janet is sheltered and loved, the crazed poet Roddy finds friends in the subway tunnels, and the remarkable Millicent Argyle dances. Ms. Davis' writing is spare, well paced, and insightful, with vivid description and dialogue that jolts the reader with its exactitude. The characters, whether male or female, young or old, walk right into the readers memory. The points of view, be they told in first person or in third, are equally strong. And there is one exceptional story written in second person, Yours Truly. From the first sentence, "You walk out the door and down the stairs, with your suitcase baning on the wooden steps and his voice clanging in your head. . .", the reader is prisoner of the story, entering into the very skin of the narrator. Davis' mastery is relentless. There is not way out, but through the darkness.

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A cure for what ails us all

In RAT MEDICINE, Lauren Davis reveals a cast of characters of subtle complexity, their stories unrelated on the surface, yet bound together by the tendrils of the human heart. The characters in her stories, most often women, are scrappers, survivors. They are strong, frail, wounded, abused, excitable, weary, frustrated, lost --in short : completely and utterly human. Crack the spine on this tome of riches and find yourself immersed in a world perhaps all to recognizable to anyone who claims to carry a soul around in their earth-bound corpus.

Rat Medicine:And Other Unlikely Curatives

Powerful, unsettling, funny, sad, thought provoking. I want to read more of her writing.

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