Brat

A Novel

By: Gabriel Smith

Narrated by: Gabriel Smith

Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

“Brat is a raucous story of the messy, messed-up business of living, dying and having a family.”—Financial Times

“The novel crackles with gothic horror, deadpan humor, and a damning sense of alienation that you won’t soon shake.”—Chicago Review of Books

From a provocative new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past

We meet our ill-tempered protagonist—the story’s titular “brat”—at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. The Gabriel of the novel is mourning the death of his father as well as a recent breakup and struggling to finish writing his second book. Alone and aimless, he agrees to move back into his parents’ house to clear it out for sale. Here, the clichés end.

Gabriel has trouble delivering on his promises: as the moldy, overgrown house deteriorates around him, so does his own health, and large sheets of his skin begin to peel from his body at a terrifying rate. In fragments and figments, Gabriel takes us on a surreal journey into the mysteries of the family home, where he finds unfinished manuscripts written by his parents that seem to mutate every time he picks them up and a bizarre home video that hints at long-buried secrets.

Strange people and figures emerge—perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded fictions—and despite his compromised state (and his more successful brother’s growing frustration) Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story, flirting with the autofictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with deadpan humor and delightfully taut prose.

Gabriel Smith’s arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writers—formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent and boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, the novel that follows is muscular yet lyrical, riddled with paradox, and told with a truly rare and compelling clarity of voice. Brat is a serious debut that refuses to take itself too seriously.

©2024 Gabriel Smith (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Instead of resolving his novel’s many mysteries, Smith explores how this family navigates the disputed borders of its shared memories, pondering what it means to choose one story over another—as well as the consequences of refusing to choose, especially in the wake of grief.”—The New York Times

“For readers looking for something that will grip you from start to finish, Brat is sure to be your breath of fresh air. The novel crackles with gothic horror, deadpan humor, and a damning sense of alienation that you won’t soon shake.”—Chicago Review of Books

“Smith evokes a distressingly potent sense of disquiet. Brat is a piece of suburban gothic, the rules of engagement between characters, and the sense of time all operating with the unhinged logic of a nightmare . . . It’s written in short, sharp bursts of action, savvy dialogue, or interiority . . . Full of dark, deadpan humor, Brat is a raucous story of the messy, messed-up business of living, dying and having a family.”—Financial Times