The Sorcery of White Rats

Adam Bertocci’s The Sorcery of White Rats is one of those novels that’s hard to categorize, and I mean that both as praise and as a point of frustration. It’s a book that wants to be a story about two women navigating life in a big city, but it’s also about prophecy, neuroscience, art, and possibly the end of the world. Sometimes the blend works brilliantly; other times it feels like the author is juggling too many balls at once.

The novel follows Bristol Volavaunt, a painter struggling to hold onto her sense of purpose, and her roommate Monroe Fisher, a lively bartender whose sudden, terrifying vision of the apocalypse sets the story into motion. What impressed me most was how Bertocci grounds this high-concept premise in the everyday texture of their lives. The details are small but vivid: Bristol scavenging a picture frame off the sidewalk, or Monroe waking with her makeup smeared and hair in tangles after a long night. These little glimpses of their routine made the characters feel real, even as the plot veered into cosmic catastrophe.

I especially liked how the book explored female friendship. The bond between Bristol and Monroe is messy, funny, and deeply loyal. Bristol doesn’t abandon Monroe when her visions begin spiraling into talk of fire and destruction; instead, she carries her, literally at one point, through the city subway system in search of answers. That loyalty, bordering on stubbornness, rang true for me. It showed how women often shoulder one another’s crises, even when outsiders would label it irrational.

Another strength is the character of Xochitl, a neuroscientist who offers skeptical, sometimes clinical commentary on the strange events. I found her voice refreshing because she cut through some of the more dramatic flourishes with a reminder that dreams and psychosis can look an awful lot alike. She added an intellectual counterbalance that made me pause and ask myself what I believed about Monroe’s visions.

That said, the book sometimes worked against itself. The tribunal-style narrative, where characters seemed to be testifying after the fact, created intrigue but also made the story harder to follow. At times, the multiple perspectives felt disjointed, as though I were reading transcripts instead of a flowing novel. I also found some passages overwrought; the apocalyptic imagery, fire raining down, stars dying, locusts everywhere, was powerful, but after a while, it started to feel repetitive.

What I appreciated most, however, was the book’s willingness to lean into ambiguity. Was Monroe touched by the divine, caught in a psychotic break, or simply channeling some creative energy bigger than herself? Bertocci doesn’t force an answer, and that open-endedness lingered with me long after I closed the book.

In the end, The Sorcery of White Rats is ambitious, uneven, and fascinating. I admired its inventiveness and the way it captured the intimacy of friendship against a backdrop of looming doom. Readers who enjoy experimental fiction and don’t mind a bit of chaos will find plenty here to wrestle with.