Queen Rat - Rated 
This is a very nicely produced hardback edition collecting together the whole story.
I ordered it based on the reputation of the book from blogs and the like and I was not disappointed. In fact, I sat up late to read all the way to the end.
First published in 1995, the plot is now perhaps a little less surprising and shocking than it was back then, but it remains a very moving story, with characters that feel real and that you care about.
Like a good thriller you find yourself hoping the story will go in a certain direction while simultaneously fearing the opposite. It is highly effective and moving stuff.
By mistake I ordered two copies, but in fact that has turned out to be a good thing because it is one of those books you will want to pass on to others.
Ratus Graphicus - Rated
This is a very nicely produced hardback edition collecting together the whole story.
I ordered it based on the reputation of the book from blogs and the like and I was not disappointed. In fact, I sat up late to read all the way to the end.
First published in 1995, the plot is now perhaps a little less surprising and shocking than it was back then, but it remains a very moving story, with characters that feel real and that you care about.
Like a good thriller you find yourself hoping the story will go in a certain direction while simultaneously fearing the opposite. It is highly effective and moving stuff.
By mistake I ordered two copies, but in fact that has turned out to be a good thing because it is one of those books you will want to pass on to others.
Huggable Rat - Rated 
Boyish-looking Helen runs away from an abusive home to live as a beggar on the streets of London. The only creature she trusts in the whole world is a pet rat she freed from her school's laboratory - a friend who also reminds her of the stories of Beatrix Potter, which she loved as a child and that now serve as a sort of escape route whenever reality gets too rough.
Bryan Talbot's graphic novel is unusual in that it's about child abuse (at a glance, it can even seem like a TV drama transported onto comics) but also the bad reputation that rats have carried for the past centuries. I didn't know, for example, that rats are highly intelligent, and that they can be quite clean since they groom themselves. Almost makes me want to get a pet rat!
A beautiful tale - Rated
One Bad Rat is a beautiful comic, entirely unlike anything I have seen before. With no fantasy elements (well, apart from the giant imaginary rat) the story stands on the telling and the art. A young girl escapes her abusive father and unloving mother, running first to London and then the Lake District, where she finds a surrogate family. It all sounds like a TV movie, but is far superior to subject of the week fodder. The story is less melodramatic, the detail better observed, the colour more vivid and (yes) the acting is more believable.
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