"Emily Austins latest is a masterclass in voice, unreliable narrators, and unknowable characters you get to know anyway because their small town and weird family and struggles with the world are so recognizable and so intimately detailed. We Could Be Rats is a one-sitting-read portrait of the complicated relationship between two sisters, unusual but familiar, moving but difficult, and, ultimately, the light in the darkness they each and we too so badly need." LAURIE FRANKEL, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is "We Could Be Rats is achingly true to life in all its ugly, gorgeous, and stupidly funny complexities. Emily Austin has written a tender exploration of grief, sisterhood, and what it is to be a bit wobbly in a world that demands you get your footing. No one blends humor and existentialism quite like AustinWe Could Be Rats is a must read." HALEY JAKOBSON, New York Times Editors Choice author of Old Enough A darkly funny and tender look at the wonders of childhood imagination, the loss of innocence, and the distinct and often inescapable bonds of sisterhood. Austin has a gift for creating characters so real with insights so uniquely personal that they live in my heart long after the final page. NATALIE SUE, internationally bestselling author of I Hope This Finds You Well "We Could Be Rats is for the townies, the freaks, the dykes, the dropoutsall of us who think the world would be better if we evaporated, if we traded working at the Dollar Pal and hating ourselves for living the good life as rodents at a carnival. Emily Austins signature dark humor and sharp observations into the human condition grip and entertain while a series of suicide notes unravel the truths behind addiction, bitter family fights, and anonymous bomb threats against a certain conservative politician in small town Canada. There are no caricatures here, just me, you, and everyone we know. Its Alice Monro for depressed lesbians, and it made me weep before it gave me a hug." MARISSA HIGGINS, author of A Good Happy Girl "Austin chronicles the complicated relationship between two sisters in her nuanced latest...[ A] distinctive character portrait.." Publishers Weekly
