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  • Reading Firmin

  • Although it is a slight book, Firmin is certainly an enjoyable book for readers. Because Firmin is a rat who literally devours literature (and learns to read in the process), many old favorites are covered with humor, intelligence and wit.

    I primarily found myself liking Firmin because it made ... Continue

    Although it is a slight book, Firmin is certainly an enjoyable book for readers. Because Firmin is a rat who literally devours literature (and learns to read in the process), many old favorites are covered with humor, intelligence and wit.

    I primarily found myself liking Firmin because it made me mindful of Watership Down - but with a rat instead of rabbits. Firmin the rat is a tragic figure in that he is highly intelligent with no way of conveying that fact. His life is in turns funny and tragic depending on the day. Words are everything, and he almost feeds on them more than the actual stuff that would actually sustain a rat in real life.

    The book is brief at only 148 pages, and is an easy, quick and rewarding read. For a first novel, it's definitely a winner though I do wish there was a little more to it.

    

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• ― moogle said on Apr 9, 2007 | Add your feedback

"I had always imagined that my life story...would have a great first line: something like Nabokov's 'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins;' or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy's 'All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'... When it comes to openers, though, the best in my view has to be the first line of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier: 'This is the saddest story I have ever heard.'"

So begins the remarkable tale of Firmin the rat. Born in a bookstore in a blighted 1960's Boston neighborhood, Firmin miraculously learns how to read by digesting his nest of books. Alienated from his family and unable to communicate with the humans he loves, Firmin quickly realizes that a literate rat is a lonely rat.

Following a harrowing misunderstanding with his hero, the bookseller, Firmin begins to risk the dangers of Scollay Square, finding solace in the Lovelies of the burlesque cinema. Finally adopted by a down-on-his-luck science fiction writer, the tide begins to turn, but soon they both face homelessness when the wrecking ball of urban renewal arrives.

In a series of misadventures, Firmin is ultimately led deep into his own imaginative soul-a place where Ginger Rogers can hold him tight and tattered books, storied neighborhoods, and down-and-out rats can find people who adore them.

A native of South Carolina, Sam Savage now lives in Madison, Wisconsin. This is his first novel.

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