Abstract

Love-Rats is a short story collection concerned with love and relationships in contemporary society in the United Kingdom and North America.
The tone of the collection is generally ironic, with longer stories allowing for deeper character development and a larger range of tone. The majority of the settings, plots, and characters are dark and absurdist.
Throughout the collection boyfriends morph into different shapes and forms including sloths, rats, and vampires. The recurring theme of anthropomorphism in respect to love allows the stories to explore painful aspects of relationships, or damaging types of relationships, and look at them from a distance.
Many contemporary authors inspired this work, mostly notably Dan Rhodes, Lydia Davis, Amy Hempel, Kurt Vonnegut, and Etgar Keret. In particular, the short shorts by these authors served as a pattern to follow because of their use of minimalist language and humour. Some stories in the collection have also been inspired by nonfiction writing on the subject of romance from various media, including newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the Guardian) as well as blogs and websites (The Toast and BuzzFeed), television shows (Girls and Broad City), and online dating apps (OkCupid and Tinder).