I couldn't finish it. I read it 5 years ago and it felt like a bizarre read. I was also put off by the descriptive eating of trash. Here is my Goodreads review of it:

>I usually have to finish a book. It's very rare for me to drop it half way through. When I decided to stop reading King Rat it was surprisingly an easy decision.
After reading an entire chapter that described a bicycle ride through London that didn't contribute to the story I felt that perhaps this isn't the book for me. I continued reading only to be faced with scenes of overly described places with no real progress in terms of story. To put it straight the story became dull and I had no desire to find out what happens next.
With that said I've always wanted to read the works of Chine Mieville. The synopsis always seem so interesting. I'll give some of his other books a try, but I do hope they don't end up doing the same as King Rat did.

I haven't actually tried another Mieville book as I wanted said I wanted to.