The Rat Catcher: A Love Story by Kim Kelly

Format: Audio (BorrowBox)
Read: March 2026

My streak of dud Aussie-authored novels is broken! This was one I came across while browsing the Australian Author collection of audiobooks in BorrowBox (available through my library), and I thought it sounded interesting, especially since the historical Sydney setting was the one element I enjoyed about A Room Made of Leaves. The Rat Catcher was a short, sweet, and ultimately uplifting novella that also deftly weaves in political and social commentary. I loved it!

The novella follows Irish immigrant Paddy O’Reilly as he takes on a new job as a rat catcher in the city’s battle against the spreading plague, and also falls in love with the beguiling Rosie Hughes. Paddy is funny, kind-hearted, a loveable dreamer, whom I was rooting for from the start. There’s also a charming parallel between our man Paddy and the legendary rat Old Scratch: both larger than average, both a bit hairy, both breaking out of their cages, both with an (inexplicable) gravitational pull toward the library!

We get to know Rosie a little less, though that’s partly just the nature of the novella format. What we do see is a woman of real resilience, empathy and agency. By the end, she’s throwing herself into the suffragette movement; one of several moments where the story gestures toward larger social change without being heavy-handed about it. To support her family, she’d been on the game, and one of Paddy’s many commendable qualities is that he never has any judgment for this. He understands she was just doing what she had to do to survive.

I knew virtually nothing about 1900s Sydney before picking this up, and nothing at all about the city’s experience with the bubonic plague. What I found particularly eye-opening was how the city’s response to the outbreak fell hardest on its poorest residents. The worst slum buildings were demolished while landlords were compensated, meaning it was often in a landlord’s financial interest for their tenants to contract the plague! Richer neighbourhoods received less disruptive treatments, their businesses stayed open, and their belongings survived. The poorest lost their homes and had what little they had left destroyed. Isn’t social injustice depressingly timeless?

There’s also a lovely thread running through the story about Irish immigration and the lack of opportunity that pushed people like Paddy to Sydney in the first place. Life on the docks was precarious, where one injury or bout of ill health could tip a family into disaster. Rosie’s situation captures that vulnerability without being maudlin about it. As Paddy reflects, it is still better to be jobless in Sydney than jobless back home in Ireland. In Australia, there will be work to be found, and the sun will be shining.

The narrator of the audiobook – Alan Devally – was also fantastic, and really brought Paddy to life and gave the whole thing a warmth and personality that had me blowing through all 4 hours in a couple of days! I had a smile on my face reading this one.

For something so short, it packs in a surprising amount: class politics, the immigrant experience, gender, faith, access to education and opportunity, and a genuinely sweet love story at its centre. Highly recommended. I will definitely be on the lookout for more from Kim Kelly!

For the Law of Fives bingo, this one gets me: Aussie author, Historical, under 200 pages and an animal (rats!)!