Reviews

• Hard work, worth the investment

  A hard slog in some ways, but what makes it difficult -- page after page crammed with evocative, provocative and carefully crafted writing -- is what makes it worthwhile. If you are not enamored of avante-gardish or experimental work this is probably not for you, but if you are you need to read it, and if you don't know, its as good a place to find out as any: clear characters, navigable plot, a familiar world, just very, very rich.

• The novel form as intellectual rap

  Short story type, rapper-inspired, intellectual-stylized writing expanded to novel length, the sameness grows tiresome -- nevertheless a promising talent and a remarkable first effort.

• Gorgeous writing in every way: language, syntax, ...

  Gorgeous writing in every way: language, syntax, narrative. A must read for any serious reader of current American fiction. Will challenge on multiple levels and be well worth the challenge. This is a new voice in fiction from which I hope to hear much more.

• At times the story reads like a beautiful nightmare

  This novel is a full-sensory ride, an intimate excavation into the self of an artist, a son, a lover. Packed full of literary nuances and verbal acrobatics, Year of the Rat is a labyrinthine narrative - a vortex-like experience that loops in and out through time, true to a person's actual memory patterns. The writing is lush and rhythmic, often working more on the level of subconscious, visceral impact - you feel the main character's suffering and passion and drive in your gut. The main character's voice crept under my skin until he had become a protagonist of mythic proportions - not because of oversized drama or self-importance, but because his honesty so defies convention. As a writer, Richardson sees and articulates what's unseen and subliminal, grotesque and sacred, taboo and unquestioned, all with equal measure of sanctity. At times the story reads like a beautiful nightmare, but in the end, there is a sense of transcendence, an inkling that, "If God is everywhere...where can evil exist?"

• With reservations, a fine debut.

  There is much to admire about Richardson's debut--passion, energy, intelligence, sensitivity, a singular voice and sensibility. But as a longtime reader and student of so-called experimental fiction, I might suggest that "Year of the Rat" is less an exercise in innovative aesthetic form and/or heightened language use, than in sheer riffing of a peculiarly formless, gratuitously improvisational sort. Stream-of-consciousness as a literary device is nothing new, and when and where appropriately employed can be highly effective. But 220 pages of it without a break, however deeply felt, is simply too much of a good thing. (To be fair, there are a number of more concretized descriptive passages, but as a rule they are overcooked.) I like free-form jazz, but when it crosses a certain threshold, when it becomes too untethered from its foundation, when it goes on and on, it loses me. My own failing perhaps. Personally, I do not mind being locked inside the first-person, narrated head of a character over the course of a short novel, however much such an approach risks falling prey to claustrophobic self-indulgence. But in order to get away with that sort of thing, the quality of that character's thought, his interior monologue, so to say, must not only be utterly compelling where not profound, it must rise to the level of a Gaddis-like brilliance, and for my money, Richardson's narrator falls short. The story he has to tell and the way he chooses to tell it, for all his empathic sensibility, are neither as interesting nor as innovative as I suspect the author thinks they are. On the other hand, "Year of the Rat" is one of those works of fiction that succeeds in teaching you how to read it, always one mark of literary merit. And Richardson's use of cited, interwoven, intertextual lifts is judiciously effective and skillfully handled. I do not regret a moment of the time I spent with the work and look eagerly forward to reading his next.

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