Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife
Reviews

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Los Angeles Times Book Review:
"Firmin is a hero in the Dickensian mode . . . with the sardonic shadings of Vonnegut, and the same explicit tenderness. . . . Savage has captured the essential tragedy of a world in which the artistic impulse kneels before the bulldozer. . . . [A] moving and wildly inventive novel."

Believer:
"Granted consciousness and a deft way with English, [Firmin] uses his bottom-up point of view to briskly recount the foibles of human and literary life, as both are endangered by the cleansing rampages of urban renewal in 1960s Boston."

Madison Capital Times:
"A deeply philosophical rumination on the joys of a literary life . . . Firmin offers a humane, thought-provoking look at what it means to be human from the most inhuman of narrators."

Poets & Writers:
"A direct descendent of Orwell's Animal Farm, Savage's Firmin . . . expose[s] our flaws, fractures, and infinite follies."

Pages:
"If a rat who imagines himself to be Fred Astaire, studies phrenology, conflates his dreams and reality, and prefers paperback books sounds a little too precious, fear not . . . First-time novelist Savage dispenses with cute creatures and delivers a rodent's rodent. And, in the process, an exquisite homage to lives lived between the pages of a book."

Minneapolis Star Tribune:
"Firmin, the debut novel by Sam Savage, gives us the funny and strangely touching story of [a] melancholic and intellectual rat and, in showing us the artist in the rat, makes us understand the rat in every artist. . . . Firmin's beloved Scollay Square is headed for destruction and with it the food scraps, hiding places and fringe culture that sustain him. When the wrecking ball and the ghost of his beloved Ginger Rogers come to claim Firmin, Savage makes us ponder what all has been plowed under in the name of eradicating blight, both in our cities and in ourselves."

WBUR Boston:
"An intriguing satire . . . With this darkly charming book, Savage has let his imagination out of the cage."

Midwest Book Review:
"A tale not to be missed."

Ready Steady Book:
"A witty novella and a powerful homage to a life lived through and around books . . . Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife merits repeated readings for Savage has filled its pages with much food for thought. This gem of a book should be a treasured addition to any bibliophile's bookshelf."

Altar Magazine:
"Fun and provocative."

Eclectica Magazine:
"A smart, playful, painful, and ultimately compelling exploration of, oddly enough, what it means to be human in an often inhuman world."

Emerald City:
"Alternately comic and tragic, but always infused with a love of books, and of the funny, hairless creatures who create and love them."

The Litblog Co-op:
"A wry and remarkably thoughtful book about the state of imagination in American society. . . . Firmin challenges our narrative assumptions by presenting us with a tale told by a rat, signifying perhaps both nothing and everything, about the relationship between reality and fiction. It can be read as a literal entertainment or a multilayered parable about gentrification and the palliatives and pitfalls of imagination."

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind:
"[A] wonderfully weird, wise and heartfelt tale."

Book-Blog.com:
"Savage's writing is exquisite . . . a very tasty read."

So Many Books:
"Highly entertaining."

Publishers Weekly:
"[An] alternately whimsical and earnest paean to the joys of literature."

Booklist:
"Blending philosophy and abundant literary references with originality, Savage crafts a small comic gem about the costs and rewards of literary illusions."

Library Journal:
"A cleverly written memoir of the colorful lives and distinct shops of a Boston borough . . . Recommended for many collections."

Kirkus Reviews:
"A rat's life may be brutish and short, but not necessarily without style."

Karen Joy Fowler:
"A surprising and surprisingly moving meditation on the advantages (and disadvantages) of an entirely fictional life. Eloquent and witty, Firmin speaks for the book-loving rodent in all of us."

Jeffrey Frank :
"Firmin is a remarkable character, and Sam Savage's debut novel is funny, sad, beautifully written, and utterly original. It is also a mash note to many of the books we've loved, and perhaps lost, along the way."

From the booksellers . . .

Powell's Books Daily Dose Recommendation

Barnes & Noble:
"A profound study of alienation and the heartbreaking obscurity of the outsider, Firmin is also a piercing commentary on the human condition in an ever-changing society. Savage weaves an inventive and dreamlike tale, by turns hilarious and startlingly moving, completely outlandish yet utterly credible, and sure to bring a smile of deep satisfaction to its readers."

Father's Day Recommendation, Shelf Awareness:
"[Firmin] ingests books, he becomes addicted to books, and this love dominates his life, perhaps ruins it. Willy-nilly quoting Jeeves and Shakespeare, Firmin is aware of his tragedy—he reads, he thinks, he dreams of life beyond rat-dom, but he can't speak, just squeak. . . . Witty and sad, Firmin's tale is for anyone who loves words."

Jessica Stockton, McNally Robinson, The Written Nerd:
"Hilariously self-deprecating."

Robert Gray, Fresh Eyes Now:
"Firmin is an amazing little gem, finding that rare and delicate balance between playful and wise. It's also a moving exploration of the incomparable pleasures and pains of living in this harsh world as an introspective, observant, and sensitive human being (even if you're a rat)."

Three Lives & Co. Staff Recommendation:
"Deeply enchanting and poignant, without precious whimsy."

Fran Wilson, Colorado State University Bookstore:
"A unique novel . . . The author, Sam Savage, is to fiction what Gary Larson is to cartooning—off the wall.  You have to read Firmin!"

P. Constant, Elliott Bay Book Company:
"This novel—about a literate rat who lives in a bookstore and befriends a Kilgore Trout-like sci-fi author—is a dash of humanist magical realism."

Lisa Howorth, Square Books:
"How can you not like a book that has, as its main characters, a rat and a bookstore owner limned warmly yet creepily against a backdrop of the demise of Boston's infamous Scollay Square in the 1960s? The tale is told by Firmin, the rat, who begins life as a runt, thirteenth in a litter nested in Norman, the bookseller's, basement. Firmin eats books to survive (his mother lacks a thirteenth nipple), devouring everything from the Bhagavad-Gita to comic strips to Irish history to astronomy, beginning with Finnegans Wake, ‘the world's most unread masterpiece.' Although at first he is indiscriminate—‘My devourings at first were crude, orgiastic, unfocused, piggy—a mouthful of Faulkner was a mouthful of Flaubert as far as I was concerned'—Firmin eventually becomes what he eats: ‘I read the diary of Anne Frank, I became Anne Frank.' His adventures in eating, reading and skulking around Boston are pretty hilarious, irreverent, and more than a little dark and Kafka-oid: ‘I got on conversational terms with all the Big Ones. Dostoevsky and Strindberg, for example. In them I was quick to recognize fellow sufferers, hysterics like me. And from them I learned a valuable lesson—that no matter how small you are, your madness can be as big as anyone's.' I urge you to read this great little (148 pages) book. Firmin is the greatest rat since Templeton."

Janis Frame, Book Buffs, Ltd.:
"Every booklover will want to have [Firmin] on his or her shelf. . . . This book is quirky, literate, humorous and sometimes sad, but never ordinary. If you're looking for something of an escape yourself, or a gift for someone else, this is it."

Hans Weyandt, Micawber's Books:
"Firmin is the kind of novel that pulls readers in with its very premise—the absurdity and zaniness leaving me to wonder how in the world it could possibly be pulled off in a believable and meaningful way. Yet it happens. In ways almost too difficult to describe in a few short sentences, the novel continues to pull and work within your head. I kept waiting for the moment when I'd say, ‘Okay, enough, this just isn't working,' but I loved the book more and more with each page."