Rating: 
Summary: very funny
Review: Some readers may find the book a bit graphic at times, but it is necessary in order for the reader to understand the cruelties being committed. More often, however, I found the book hillarious. Several times, I had to laugh out loud, which I don't often do reading. Dr. Rat's encounter with a homosexual rat is one of the funniest things I have ever read. I highly reccommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Just a GREAT Book
Review: Watership Down smokes with Grateful Dead. Whacky and inspired. Read book in one sitting, laughing out loud.
Rating:
Summary: Charlotte's Web this ain't
Review: William Kotzwinkle's novel Dr. Rat combines a cautionary dash of Orwell's Animal Farm with the rancid horror of Sinclair's The Jungle to tell a savagely critical tale of humanity's mistreatment of the other animals sharing our world. Dr. Rat goes for the throat with appalling accuracy, clawing at the emotional core we try to protect with logic and reason. This novel forces us to look at the cruelly underside of animal experimentation, slaughtering houses and hunting. Told with a savage humor that does nothing to cushion the blow of confronting our own barbarism, Dr. Rat stands out as a masterpiece of recognition and rage.The title character is a laboratory rat long mad from running the maze. "Death is freedom," he shouts again and again.
But while Dr. Rat gaily recites the gratuitous atrocities performed on his fellows by the Learned Professor and his graduate assistants -- "Nobody knows exactly what he's doing, or why. It is sufficient that each month we mention cancer and a new kind of plastic." -- the revolution brewing inside the lab mirrors a great gathering of every sort of animal in the outside world. The story flashes to the mind of a different creature for a chapter, either one suffering at the hand of man or one beginning the trek to the mustering, then flips back to Dr. Rat's lone stand against the rebelling research subjects. Dr. Rat ignites emotions that most of us are less than comfortable experiencing; all the more reason to read this book and to open your eyes. Even though this book is fiction, there is a lot of truth to it. This is a book I think everyone should read just so they know what happens in animal testing laboratories. Whether you're not aware or would rather turn away from the issue, animal testing is a cruel science experiment gone wrong.
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