Ratman's Notebooks

"Ratman's Notebooks" is a novel by Gilbert Ralston (written under the name "Stephen Gilbert"). The novel features an unnamed misfit who relates better to rats than to humans. It was the basis for the films "Willard", "Ben", and the 2003 remake "Willard".

Plot

The book is set as a series of journal entries, where the unnamed narrator goes back and forth between his life with the rats and his work, in a low-level job at a company that his father used to own. In these entries, the young man dwells on the hatred he feels for his boss, the stresses of caring for his aging mother, a nameless girl he becomes fond of and above all the families of rats which he has befriended and which he uses them for company, companionship, survival and revenge.