Brat Audiobook

Brat is a raucous story of the messy messedup 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 wont 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 illtempered protagonistthe storys titular bratat 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 clichs 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 longburied secrets

Strange people and figures emergeperhaps directly from the novels embedded fictionsand despite his compromised state and his more successful brothers 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 Smiths arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writersformally inventive influenced by the rhythms of the internet and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation Irreverent and boundarypushing 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