Brat: A Novel
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.
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Brat: A Novel
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.
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Brat: A Novel

Brat: A Novel

by Gabriel Smith

Narrated by Gabriel Smith

Unabridged — 5 hours, 8 minutes

Brat: A Novel

Brat: A Novel

by Gabriel Smith

Narrated by Gabriel Smith

Unabridged — 5 hours, 8 minutes

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Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/15/2024

Smith blends autofiction and absurdity in his provocative if underwhelming first novel, which follows a 20-something writer named Gabriel who’s tasked by his mother with clearing out his childhood home and putting it up for sale after his father’s death. Life is already tough for Gabriel. He’s having trouble writing, and is heartbroken after a split from his girlfriend, also a writer, whose work is gaining popularity on the internet. Moreover, the top layer of Gabriel’s skin has been peeling off for some unknown reason. Others believe it’s only eczema, but he’s not convinced (“It looked like a glove of myself”), and he copes by drifting through his days on Xanax. His father was a writer, and after finding manuscripts written by his mother, who lives in a nursing home, Gabriel learns she was one, too. Every time he picks up his mother’s manuscripts, they seem to change. And not only that­—the characters in his mother’s stories come to life and warn him not to sell the house. Unfortunately, the intriguing plot is undercut by pedestrian prose (“I went out of my father’s study and took half of one of the pink Xanax bars and lay down on the sofa and waited for my thoughts to turn off”). This doesn’t quite match the scale of its ambition. Agent: Kristi Murray, Wylie Agency. (June)

From the Publisher

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

"A raw, delicate tale about grief and growing up, in which the protagonist’s brattiness is mostly window dressing . . . The result is a novel about the power and mutability of family lore, written in a tenderpunk style that conceals its sentimentality behind an appealing coat of sarcasm.” The New Yorker

“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

“Weirdly good, even great . . . Just as the characters reveal their provocations to be endearments, so does the book. It becomes earnest, even sentimental, in the best way: it expresses something conventional yet true . . . Smith has pulled off a peculiar bildungsomething, in which the book grows up with the character.” Bookforum
 
“Between beginning and ending, things get pretty damn weird. Until the last few chapters, that is, when order is restored almost as neatly as in an Elizabethan comedy . . . This is hip gothic . . . There are many moments of deadpan humor . . . Smith’s prose makes mid-period Raymond Carver’s seem positively baroque. But it effectively conveys the narrator’s state of mind.” Airmail

“There’s a moving coming-of-age family story here . . . Smith definitely has something; and his next novel, already announced, is called The Complete, which sounds like a promise.” —The Guardian

“This novel is funny. Not witty or zany, but funny, actually funny . . . Smith’s narration is already asking to be read twice.” Chicago Review of Books

“This original, clever story is brilliant on grief, madness, and creativity. It's beautifully written, hilarious, and heartbreaking.” —The Daily Mail

“It's a book about loss and the anxiety of the modern age, tinged with humor and deep insight that will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.” —Town & Country

“Smith's picaresque first novel is told from the perspective of Gabriel, a writer struggling with numerous issues . . . a deeply gothic work that never quite settles the reader in a certain world as Gabriel’s foibles, ghostly visions, and uncertainties filter every moment. Written in short, clipped chapters and featuring uproarious dialogue (especially with Gabriel's brother), this is a darkly comic and brilliantly unusual debut.” —Booklist

“[Smith's] dialogue shines . . . Readers who appreciate the morbidly funny and the just plain morbid will find a lot to love in these pages. A weird and darkly funny novel from a writer to watch.” —Kirkus

“Messy with glitched realities and body horror, Brat breathes the same thrillingly claustrophobic air as Inland Empire and Ubik. It’s a skin-shedding ouroboros of grief and laughter, and the most brain-melting British debut I’ve read in ages.” —Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams

“Gabriel Smith’s prose is like if Joan Didion and Shirley Jackson took Xanax and used the internet. Brat is a sharp, eerie, confident debut about grief, memory, art, and so much more. Smith is a major new talent.” —Jordan Castro, author of The Novelist
 
“Gabriel Smith’s jauntily creepy and hilarious tale of a grief-stalked scapegrace’s sloughing-off and regeneration of selves in the filial murk of a moldering homestead is a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for a new, quaking generation. Brat will unnerve and seduce you.” —Garielle Lutz, author of Worsted

“Gabriel Smith has written a truly unique and surprising book. He is the rarest thing: a distinctive stylist on the line and structure level. Brat is so strange and so funny. I laughed a lot while reading.” —Rachel Connolly, author of Lazy City

Kirkus Reviews

2024-04-19
A man loses his skin, and possibly his sanity, in this bizarre debut.

Gabriel, the narrator of Smith’s novel, is having a rough time. As the book opens, the London man is in a doctor’s office; he thinks he might have a concussion after having been hit by his teenage nephew. The doctor gives him the all-clear for his head but notes he might have eczema. As it turns out, it’s something much weirder and much worse: Large pieces of skin begin to peel from his body. That’s not the only setback he’s facing—his girlfriend has abruptly moved out of their shared flat, and his father recently died, which Gabriel isn’t handling well. (It doesn’t help that he calls one of the mourners at the funeral a “stupid purple bitch.”) Gabriel moves to the house his parents shared—his mother is in a nursing home—in order to prep it for sale, but he doesn’t get much done except drink, smoke weed, and read mysteriously changing manuscripts left behind by his parents. He also encounters a mysterious boy and girl who he thinks might have a connection to his parents’ stories, along with a mysterious man with a deer face mask. This is a bizarre novel, but not in a self-conscious way—Smith genuinely seems to care about his characters, especially the can’t-win-for-losing Gabriel, and it’s not quirky for quirk’s sake. While his prose can be unadorned to a fault at times, his dialogue shines, and there’s an undercurrent of humor throughout that leavens the book’s darkness. (In one section, Gabriel says that he slicks his hair back “like a movie Italian.”) This novel isn’t for everyone, but readers who appreciate the morbidly funny and the just plain morbid will find a lot to love in these pages.

A weird and darkly funny novel from a writer to watch.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940159561121
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 06/04/2024
Edition description: Unabridged
Sales rank: 693,750

Read an Excerpt

I was in the waiting room. Then I was in the examination room. There was a chair, and another chair, and a hydraulic doctor bed. Sit down, the doctor said. I didn't know where. Not on the bed, he said. I sat on a chair.

"I think I have a concussion," I said.

"Why do you think that?" the doctor said.

"My nephew hit me."

"He hit you?"

"In the nose. Then in the back of the head."

"How old is he?" the doctor said.

"Fourteen," I said.

"Okay," he said, "take off your shirt."

"Really?" I said.

"Sure," the doctor said. I unbuttoned my shirt.

He shone a light in my eyes.

The light was on the end of a cone. The cone was set at ninety degrees on the end of a metal rod. It looked like a thing dentists use for looking at mouths.

"No concussion," the doctor said. It didn't seem like he could tell that just by shining a cone in my eyes.

"Looks like you have a little eczema here, though," he said. He pointed to my chest then spun away in his chair.

I looked down at myself. There was a red patch, and what looked like a slightly raised piece of dead skin in the center of my chest. Just to the right of where I assumed my heart was.

"Okay," I said.

"Don't worry," he said, looking at his computer, "very treatable. I'm writing you a prescription. For hydrocortisol cream."

"Don't you mean hydrocortisone?"

"Yes," he said, "hydrocortisone. That is what I said."

My brother's wife, when I was back at the house, said I shouldn't have provoked him.

"He's very sensitive," she said.

"What?" I said. "I didn't provoke him."

"He loved your dad," my brother's wife said. "They had a real connection."

"I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Are you really going to wear that outfit?" she said. I was wearing a T-shirt with lots of Phils on it: Phil Leotardo, Phil Neville, the Philippines, the concept of "Philanthropy," Philadelphia (the spread), the London Philharmonic, Prince Philip.

"What?" I said. "No. I am going to wear a suit."

"It has a stain on it. You can't wear that."

"I am going to change," I said.

My brother walked into the kitchen and kissed his wife on the forehead as she walked out of it. He started doing something in a cupboard.

"You should wear the Phil T-shirt to Dad's funeral," he said.

"I am going to change," I said, and left the room.

I looked at myself in the half-steamed bathroom mirror. This was the house I grew up in.

The doctor was right about the skin on my chest, just to the right of where I assumed my heart was. It looked all weird.

I picked at the skin. It came away painlessly.

Just a little at first. It made a thick and translucent white flap. I flicked at it with my fingernail. I pulled at it. More pulled away like damp paper. Over my left nipple, then right up to my armpit.

It started to sting a little like it was meant to stay on. I stopped tearing myself. The skin just hung there.

Then I kept going.

I couldn't walk around with half my chest hanging off me.

Once I'd torn it mostly off, I had an alarmingly large piece of skin in my hands. I looked at it.

It was me but losing its shape, still slightly ridged where it had run over my rib cage.

I looked at my body in the mirror.

There was a long rift where I'd removed the dead skin. It poked outward, up the side of me, almost imperceptibly, like the unfindable edge of a Sellotape roll.

I didn't know what to do with the skin that had come off. I couldn't leave it in the bathroom bin where my brother or his wife would find it. And I didn't want to flush it, either.

I thought about putting it in my pocket and taking it downstairs and wrapping it in a plastic bag and disposing of it secretly. But that felt insane. And I didn't want to get caught doing it.

I dropped the skin into the bathtub. It made a slap sound.

I turned the showerhead on all the way. I pointed it at the skin. After a moment it began to break apart, as if decomposing, and the tiny pieces of it were carried by the spiraling water down the sloping porcelain, down into the plughole.

After the funeral, at the wake, which was at the house, my nephew apologized for punching me.

"I'm sorry for punching you in your head," he said.

"No problem," I said.

"I just get so angry sometimes," he said.

"Right," I said.

"Don't you?" he said.

I poured myself more wine from the bottle I was guarding from everyone else. The new skin was tender under my shirt, under my jacket.

The living room was large but full of mourners. My uncle by marriage was holding court on refreshments.

"Yes, I borrowed it from work," he said. "From the work canteen."

He was talking about a large metal urn that stored and dispensed near-boiling water.

"I thought a lot of people would want tea," my uncle said, "and that this would make it easier."

"It must have been hard to get here," I said, "with all the hot water in."

"What?" he said.

"Imagine if it spilled on someone," I said. "They'd get all burned."

"No," he said, "you don't transport it full. That'd be dangerous."

"That's what I'm saying," I said.

"What are you doing for work at the moment?" he said. "Still writing? Like your parents?"

"Yeah," I said.

"And the money's all right? I read an article about how books don't make money anymore. Barely any of you make any money."

My brother walked over. He was holding a glass of wine and a beer.

"I see you have two drinks," I said, to him. "Nice."

He tried to hand the beer to my uncle, who put his palms up and made a goofy face, then mimed driving a car.

"Thanks for apologizing to your nephew," my brother said, to me.

"I didn't," I said.

"He really appreciated it."

"I didn't apologize. He apologized to me."

"Sure," my brother said.

"Hey," I said. "Some of my skin came off earlier."

My brother was a plastic surgeon. That was his job.

"What?" he said.

"In the shower. Like a reptile."

"Your skin came off?"

"Like a reptile," I repeated.

"That sounds like eczema. You should see a doctor."

"You are a doctor."

"I'm not a skin doctor."

"You are a skin doctor."

"No, I'm not. I'm a surgeon. I'm not looking at your eczema skin."

"I saw a doctor today," I said, "and he gave me a cream." I tried to pour myself more wine from my bottle but it was empty.

"So use the cream," my brother said.

I walked away to get another drink.

Back in the kitchen, a neighbor from down the road said it had been a beautiful ceremony.

"That was a beautiful ceremony," she said.

She was older than sixty and wore purple all the time. Even to funerals.

"It was?" I said. But she thought I was just agreeing.

"He would have loved it."

"He would have?"

"He would have found it very moving."

"I thought he might have found it disappointing," I said, "being dead."

"Yes, he would have found it very moving," she said. "He was a very emotional man. A true artist."

I thought about my father in the audience of my brother's school flute recital, holding a biro and the photocopied program, ticking off each act as it finished.

I thought about my father in the audience of my brother's school prize-giving, slumped. I thought about him sitting up, suddenly, when a small girl, maybe nine, won an award for "dance." I thought about him saying loudly, incredulously-loud enough for parents to shush him-"Darts?"

"You knew him pretty well," I said.

"We had a connection," she said. "He was a true artist."

I looked around for a different conversation.

"And so kind," she said, "staying with your mother. After everything."

I drank the last of my new glass of wine. I put the glass down on the counter hard.

"Listen, you stupid purple bitch," I said. "Shut the fuck up about my dad."

I woke up hungover in my childhood bedroom. I was still wearing my shoes and trousers.

My white shirt had quite a lot of blood on it. My head hurt under my face.

I took my shoes off and went downstairs to make coffee. My brother's wife was in the kitchen already.

"Coffee?" I said. I gestured at her with a mug. She didn't say anything. She just made a sound and left the room.

My brother walked in as she walked out. He kissed her on the forehead as they passed each other.

"Got some blood on you," he said. "Make me some coffee."

I sat down at the breakfast island in the middle of the kitchen. The tea urn was gone. But there were glasses and mugs everywhere. The foily remains of wake snacks.

I took my cigarettes out and lit one.

"Jesus Christ," my brother said.

"My head hurts," I said.

"She got you good," he said.

"I should have hit her back," I said.

"As if you could," he said. "She made you look like a little bitch."

"Yeah," I said.

"You are a little bitch," my brother's wife shouted, from another room.

I heard my brother and his wife leave to get some air or something. So I called my girlfriend.

It rang once. Then the line went dead. There was no option for voicemail.

I let myself count the days in my head. I had last seen her three weeks ago tomorrow.

Maybe she had blocked my number now.

The wood felt cold and crumb-covered against my forehead.

My brother drove me and his wife to our mother's nursing home. My brother's wife made sure she sat up front so I sat in the back of their car, which was small, but new, and expensive-seeming.

"How was the funeral?" my mother said, from her chair, which was disgusting.

"It was beautiful," my brother's wife said. "It was a really beautiful ceremony, Rebecca. Everyone said so."

"I'm so glad," my mother said.

"Have you got everything you need, Mum? Do you need us to bring anything?" my brother said, louder than necessary. My mother ignored him.

"What happened to your face?" she said.

"Cheryl hit me," I said.

"Why would she do that?" my mother said.

"I was defending Dad's honor."

"He called her a stupid purple bitch," my brother said.

"Shut up," I said.

"Oh, no," my mother said.

"I didn't," I said.

"Oh, no," my mother said.

"And my skin is peeling off, Mum," I said. "I'm very frightened."

"What?" my mother said.

"Nothing," my brother said. "He is just joking. He has some eczema. He is just joking."

"I hope you didn't hit her back," my mother said.

"I got her good. Spark out," I said. I mimed a jab with my right. "Cheryl's in the hospital."

"Oh, no," my mother said.

"No, he didn't," my brother's wife said. "He's just trying to upset you. He didn't hit her."

"She's messed up," I said. "She'll never look the same."

"Oh, no," my mother said.

Maybe we should just kill Mum," I said, in the foyer of the nursing home, as we were leaving. "No parents, no rules. Clean break."

"Shut up," my brother's wife said.

"What did you say the advance on your book was?" my brother said.

He meant my second book, the book I had told everyone I was writing, and got paid an advance on.

I had told everyone it was about an elderly gardener. The gardener lives near Chernobyl, in Soviet times.

The gardener dies because he's so old. In the middle of the gardener's funeral rites, the nearby power plant explodes. The funeral is abandoned halfway through.

The gardener becomes a dybbuk, which was a kind of Jewish ghost I'd seen in a movie. He has to wander around the Earth endlessly, gardening or something, until something gets sorted out.

That was as far as I'd gotten. I hadn't actually written any of it yet.

I had tried. But every time I tried I just didn't.

"Fifty five thou," I said. "Clean, nonsequential bills."

"Fucking hell," my brother said.

"That's wonderful news," my brother's wife said, "congratulations. You won't need to be in London. You can help get the house in order. For the sale."

"Yes, good idea," I said, thinking about not having to pay rent anymore.

It was autumn and there were leaves everywhere. I decided to go back to London to get things. On the train I sat facing the wrong direction and looked out the window. The air was full of rain. I was carried backward into it.

In my flat the furniture was still there. The sofa, the television, the stereo, the gifted soft-furnishings.

But when I opened the wardrobe to get a clean jumper it was empty. Or, two-thirds empty. All my girlfriend's things had disappeared. Her dresses, blouses, skirts. Her floating light-fabricked trousers. Her multiple heavy winter coats. I went to the dresser and checked the drawers that belonged to her.

But they were empty, too. All that was left was lint, and the decrepit sprigs of lavender she believed would ward off moths.

Then I noticed the bookshelves. They were also mainly empty. So was the bathroom. All the stupid and expensive houseplants had disappeared.

I was surprised at how few of the things we owned together belonged to me. There were outlines of dust all around the places her things used to live.

The air smelled different somehow.

I looked around for a note or something. But there wasn't one. So I tried calling her phone again and it rang once and then went silent.

I went out onto the balcony for a while.

The sun was setting gray.

When I woke, it felt like someone was watching me.

I sat up in bed for a second. Then I turned on the lights. But there was nobody in the room. And the curtains were closed.

I noticed that in my sleep I'd built a person out of pillows next to me. Maybe so it felt as if she was still in the bed.

I could feel my heart pushing my chest.

When I couldn't get back to sleep I dressed and had a drink. My girlfriend had taken some of the wine but left the spirits. After that I felt a bit better.

I started packing possessions into the suitcase she hadn't taken. It was the ugliest one. We had named it "Ugly Green."

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