Weekly Reader:The Revenge of the Stoned Rats: The Novel Previously Known As The Prince by Eddie Smyth; Confusing Weird Book For Weirdness' Sake

Weekly Reader: The Revenge of The Stoned Rats : The Novel Previously Known As The Prince by Eddie Smyth; Confusing Weird Book For Weirdness' Sake

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: There are books like Kiki Denis' Life is Big that seem weird, but really there is a method to the weirdness. They are trying to make a point and tell a story in a fresh unique way. The weirdness is used as a means to engage the Reader with the plot and theme.

 Then there are books that are weird for no point at all, weird just for the sake of being weird. They like to throw anything at the Reader for no particular reason, except to show the author's writing ability. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, they are weird for weirdness's sake. 

Eddie Smyth's The Revenge of the Stoned Rats: The Novel Previously Known As The Prince is part of the latter category. It could tell an interesting story. But it takes so many unnecessary detours into surreality that not only does it halt the plot, but after awhile the Reader forgets what the plot even was.

The book begins cleverly and humorously enough with an introduction shaming the Reader for reading introductions. ("Who told you to read this? Is it proscribed (sic) reading?") It is hilarious in a meta-fourth wall break sense. It also tries to prepare you for the type of book that you may be reading. Though nothing can really prepare you for it.

The book begins pretty decently showing the life of an impoverished kid from a troubled family in early 1970's Ireland. Billy Sikes (his father thought Billy's name "was funny or clever or something. It was later in (Billy's) life before (he) knew why".) is an 11 year old with a messed up home life. His father, then his mother abandoned him. He lives with his extremely religious, but verbally abusive aunt, Kate, and his two female cousins: one of whom, Anna, might be mentally disabled and the other, Agnes, is  a sadistic bully. His half-brother, Herbert, has returned home, but seems to be in the grips of depression. Herbert spends all his time in his room listening to records or hanging out with a wild crowd late at night.

Billy's only outlet is hanging out with his best friend, Jimmy Conroy. Jimmy also has an unhappy home life. His mother "left with the milkman." (Billy speculates that they are friends because they share a common bond of having absent deadbeat mothers.) Now, Jimmy lives with his alcoholic father and two older brothers: one of whom, Mickey spends all his time riding motorcycles and the other, Patrick, does the cooking and cleaning (and appears to be the only sane one in both families).

The two live in a pretty rough neighborhood where drugs and gangs run rampant. One of whom is called The Black Prince and appears to run the neighborhood. Some people get attacked and others have vengeance on their minds. It's a grim place where abuse is all too common and childhood ends too quickly.  

The book has a strong beginning with a very sarcastic narrator filled with one-liners. (On Herbert's birth: "(Their mother) didn't understand where the baby came from, she'd insisted that she must have been 'immaculately concepted.' We'd been told about that in school, but I hadn't a clue about what it meant. But it was a good story, and it was religion, so it had to be true.")

This book could be an excellent coming of age story about a young man fighting his way through abuse, drugs, and gang violence into maturity. Then it takes a left turn into Bizarro World with no real  purpose or reason.

On a fishing trip, Billy hitches a ride with a biker with a fish head. The fish biker suddenly blurts out his life story to Billy, a total stranger, revealing that he may or may not be connected to Billy. Then, there's another stranger who may also be connected to them as well as The Black Prince. Billy might be shown a snuff film with one of his relatives in the starring role.

The Revenge of the Stoned Rats becomes a book where nothing is straightforward. In fact, the plot itself can't be easily described after awhile. 

The second part gets worse as characters thought dead return to life. There is a sudden trip into a western. Supernatural rats appear to frighten Billy almost too death. The plot of Billy and his friends seeking vengeance for attacks on their families is spread out between one strange hallucinogenic moment after another.

After awhile, the Reader doesn't know what is going on. Is Billy telling the story in modern day and embellishing it with extra details? Is he a drug addict going through a bad trip? Is he insane and hallucinating while in a psychiatric hospital? Is he dying and his life is flashing before his eyes? Is he a writer going through writer's block, so he is just just putting down whatever runs through his head? The introduction suggests one thing, but the ending suggests something completely different. The Reader doesn't know and after awhile doesn't care.

I like books that are weird. They make you sit up and pay attention. They take the Reader from their comfort zone and stretches their imagination while allowing them to meditate on what the book is really trying to say. However, there is such a thing as being too weird and Revenge of the Stoned Rats crosses that line.

The weirdness seems to appear in place of a coherent plot. It appears as though Smyth removed the plot just to be thought of as meta or clever, but instead just comes across as bizarre and confusing. It's like listening to a rambling account from someone who is mentally unstable. It might be interesting, but it is way too confusing to follow.

If there was a stronger point to the weirdness, or a final reason for why the story is told the way it is, it would make some sense. But unfortunately, The Revenge of the Stoned Rats is not that book. It has no sense and no reason. It might be interesting at first, but then it becomes confusing, pretentious, irritating, and even boring.