The Rats, book review. (James Herbert)

Back to my childhood again for this one; James Herbert's The Rats.

Classic British horror with all the gore and lack of plotline you would expect and love from the 1970s and boy does it deliver.

Such is the pace of this novel, the whole thing is over in a flash (I am not a fast reader but read it in about five hours) and it's rather formulaic too, introducing a new character per chapter at the start, before killing most of them off rather gruesomely soon after, and then the school teacher hero (the author was a school teacher himself when he wrote the book) turns up in the right place at the wrong time to save the day - the attack on the school is actually one of the highlights of the book, along with a doomed underground train where most of the people aboard become a meal - but what I couldn't believe (this book was first published in 1974, which isn't an excuse by the way) is how sexist and archaic it felt. I've recently re-read Stephen King's first novel, Carrie, which was also published in '74' and that didn't feel anywhere near as old, but there you are, just a word of warning.
The book is set in London but it's a London I don't recognise. There are derelict areas by the river Thames where we now have luxury apartments and bomb-damaged rubble-strewn swathes of rat-infested land that probably have an Ikea or Costa drive-through today, which again, for me at least, because I know London reasonably well, dates the book even more.

So, the writing is okay - I should point out that when I first cut my teeth on James Herbert's back catalogue (or before I knew any better) all of his books got five stars because, as a teenager, the gorier the book, the more blood that was spilled and the more ingenious the ways in which it was spilled were, was all that really mattered - and its pace, as I've said, means you'll tear through in no time. The characters do lack depth though, and their backstories mean very little because the character to whom they refer to are in most cases, quickly devoured.

So, the Rats, one of my first love affairs of the literary world, written by one of the first authors that really got me reading for pleasure, is now a mixed bag. I will always have it and its author to thank for leading me down the path I am still on, for helping me fall in love with the world of books, but, and it pains me to write this, overall, now, thirty-odd years later, I can see it for what it is, average.

Brilliant in parts - the scene in the school really is that good - but showing its age in regards to how it portrays women and in the basic way it is written.

Three stars then for James Herbert's The Rats, but I'll never forget where it all started.