This was one of my most anticipated debuts of the year. Gabriel is a writer in his twenties whose father has passed away; his mother is in a care home. When he moves into his parents’ old house, Gabriel retreats further into himself. Are the strange things he describes – a manuscript that keeps changing, the house crumbling, his own skin peeling off – all in his head? It’s a great concept that’s held back by frustratingly childish language and humour. At many points you’d think the narrator was meant to be about 12. I enjoyed various inserts into the main narrative (some stories ostensibly written by Gabriel’s ex; a somewhat metafictional script) much more than that narrative itself. I liked the way the ending brings everything together, poignantly framing the way Gabriel finally shucks off the shroud of grief, but it doesn’t fully offset the unevenness of the rest. As imperfect as first novels sometimes can be, though with sparks of interesting style. I’ve enjoyed other short stories by Smith, and think that’s perhaps where his strengths as a writer lie, at least at this point.

A story of grief and secrecy. The plot takes place in an old, hauntingly gothic home that’s decaying and falling into decrepitude - but it is not only the house that is falling apart. We follow Gabriel, a some what failing writer find his feet after the loss of his father, the end of his relationship with his girlfriend, and his new task of emptying and preparing the house for resale. Upon sorting his parents belongings, Gabriel comes cross various manuscripts and VHR tapes, all of which allude to familial secrets and also parallel dimensions. This book is a captivating read of stories within stories. I will admit, it took me a second to grasp what was going on, and the episode including the oligarch story kind of took me for a surprise (in a good way) but from there I was kind of like … where am I going next! - a great rendition of the effects of grief and lack of closure. I totally recommend this book to people who enjoyed books such as “things have gotten worse since we last spoke” in the way that this book totally disorientates the reader. I found this a quick paced read despite the moments set to confuse, the premise of the book well and truly had me hooked from the beginning to the end.

I started this one last night and haven't quite finished it yet, but HAD to jump on to say that this is my favourite book of 2024... and will probably stay my favourite for the rest of the year 😉. I'm obsessed (and will leave a full review soon).

“When someone dies it becomes a competition to be in charge of the history of that person. People want their memory to be the real one.”

Gabriel Smith’s debut novel is about a man who loses his father and is struggling with his his passing. Along with trying to cope with this grief he has broken up with his girlfriend, he has failed to write his second novel that he has promised is almost finished and his skin has been peeling off in sheets. He’s living in his childhood home so he can clear it out for it to be sold. However the house is also falling apart.

This novel was not what I had expected. It’s main focus is on the character of Gabriel and how he is coping with his life that is seemingly falling apart. Told mainly through his perspective, his struggles with grief are explored through his unusual experiences. His family is full of creatives and he soon discovers his mother and father’s manuscripts and VHS tapes where they appear to change everytime he goes back to them. This indicate to his brother that he is losing his mind.

The author makes great work in intensifying Gabriel’s emotions through the unravelling of his mind. The imagery of his skin peeling isn’t the only instance of horror in this story. The way the manuscripts are read and the VHS tape is played with the visions and strange people he sees, that sense of losing ones sanity intensifies.

At times it became more than just a horror or ghost story, there are several parts of dark humour that helped explain the dynamics of the family and the course Gabriel is on before he realises what is happening to him.

An interesting and entertaining novel a lot of you would enjoy.

“Are you okay?’ she said. ‘You sound fucked up.’
‘I’m not okay. All my skin is peeling off. And there’s a video of my mother with a family I don’t recognise.’

There was a pause, filled with telephone noise, crowd noise, music.

‘What?’
‘And the family are in a manuscript Mum wrote, but doesn’t remember writing. And I think two of the characters are here in real life, too. I’ve met them. A boy and a girl. But the manuscript changes sometimes.’”

Brat, subtitled A Ghost Story, is narrated by Gabriel, a writer of around 30 but rather more immature than that might apply and who has yet to write a word of the second novel for which he has received a 50k advance. He has a much older brother, a doctor. Gabriel is preparing for his father’s wake but has had to visit A&E after a fight with his 12 year old nephew.

“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.”

Their mother, a novelist, is in a care home suffering from dementia and Gabriel moves into the family home, ostensibly to clear it out to sell, but he seems more interested in cultivating the cannabis farm he finds in the attic, and reading his parents’ papers.

The story that follows, at least in Gabriel’s account, becomes increasingly surreal (although his brother and sister-in-law think it is invented as an excuse not to prepare the house for sale or to write his novel).

Gabriel’s own skin is peeling off like a snake (it did make me chuckle that a succession of doctors think carefully and then prescribe hydrocortisone - although I’m surprised there isn’t a Fucidin-S made specially for the condition) and as the quote that opens my review hints, he finds a video which hints at his mother having two families, a draft of a novel which seems to tell of their story and then meets a mid-late teens boy and girl who somehow seem to be the people featured, as well as a man dressed as a deer who lives in the shed and helps out in the garden.

The novel itself contains scripts within the script - extracts from some of these works, which also change each time they are read, alongside others such as a short-story published in Guernica by his ex-girlfriend about a Russian oligarch who finds and buys expensive artworks to masturbate and ejaculate on them.

“To be alone after dark in the National Gallery is a privilege –one afforded to friends of higher-level staff and generous benefactors. And Vladislav was now both. And, leaving his assigned assistant in the North Wing with some lesser Dutch work from the seventeenth century, he walked alone, heels clipping the cold and silent gallery floors.

And then he saw her. In the Mond Room. The Virgin in Prayer, by Sassoferrato. She was perfect.

Blue and pink and white like stained glass, or sweet wrappers, and full of her own light in the near-dark room.

Vladislav felt himself growing erect underneath his soft and expensive blue jeans.”

At times the narration is very funny, particular the succession of fights our narrator Gabriel provokes then loses (his nephew; a 60 year old female neighbour; an estate agent - and his brother although that one’s more a draw):

@We sat in her living room. Her television said: AA: the future of breakdown, today. She turned it off.

‘I got in a fight with the estate agent,’ I said, pointing at the new cuts and bruising on my face. ‘My brother and his wife are very cross with me.’
‘Are you hurt?’ my grandmother said.
‘Not really. I got some good ones in, too. In the melee,’ I said.

She almost laughed, then made her face stern.”

Although at others the humour (see also above) is rather puerile - while this is the character not the narrator I could have done without the frequent use of homophobic and misogynistic slur words - and at one point channels South Park’s Harry and Meghan sketch:

“’I think about it whenever I eat Creme Eggs. Or whenever I’m fighting.’

‘No wonder you lose so often,’ my brother said.

He took a bite of the Cornetto and then a drink of the whisky. On television they were swinging a Viking axe against a new dead pig.

‘Are you really going to eat two Cornettos?’ I said. ‘Your brain will freeze.’
‘Yeah,’ said my brother.
‘Can I have some whisky?’ I said.

He said yeah again and passed me the bottle. I drank a little bit from it.

‘I’m sorry, obviously,’ I said.
‘For calling my wife a bitch?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘For repeatedly calling my wife a bitch?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘You’re sorry for what? What?’ he said, miming that he couldn’t hear.
‘For repeatedly calling your bitch wife a bitch,’ I said.
‘Thank you,’ he said.”

Overall a quick (despite 300+ pages) and enjoyable read although an odd mix of not exactly subtle humour with a creative metafictional take on a story of parallel lives, fate and loss.

I have very mixed feelings about this book - it had so many things that I usually love but overall I just found it okay.

The writing was start and matter of fact with some chapters only being a page long. This did make it an incredibly fast and easy to read book. It was enjoyable to read but sometimes about it didn’t flow properly and I was left wanting a lot more from the writing. There was humour that I both enjoyed and found a little too on the heat at times.

I really enjoyed the exploration of grief and I thought the author did a really interesting job of it. It was emotional and I loved how it ended.

Although it wasn’t my favourite, I would still read from this author again!

this was such an easy read i absolutely FLEW through it. sometimes i think something being an easy read isn’t necessarily Good, but in this instance ?? i thoroughly enjoyed this. the prose is very stark and matter of fact; reminded me of motherthing a LOT which i adored!! anyway this was a really poignant exploration of grief and loss, and the way the author chose to end it tied it up perfectly. we didn’t just end on everything-sucks territory. i usually LOVE that territory but i think this book really benefitted from the uplifting end.

highly recommend !!

I would highly recommend to family and friends. I love author’s that can describe a scene and you are immediately there, you close your eyes and you picture the scene. This author does that for me.

Reading this novel felt like a multimedia experience. Smith's prose is cinematic, with an attention to detail that conjures up near-perfect images in the mind's eye of the book's spiraling narrative. An exciting debut from a instant-favourite author.

I do apologise. I wanted this book as I thought it sounded interesting ... but it really didn't work at all for me.

The writing style was vague and overly simplistic/repetitive. The story, I felt, had been told before and was no way original. I felt like I'd read the book a few years back - it reminded me of Tao Lin and Bret Easton Ellis, but literally as someone trying to sound like those authors. Maybe as a teenager I would've liked it but now (at 32), the book felt very... I don't know... forced? I'm not really sure who the book is for either.

I wanted to like it. I am sorry and good luck to the author and publisher. Though I am confused who green-lighted this....

Anyway, thank you NetGalley for sending me a copy. Sorry I didn't like it, as I know these reviews are to help sales, etc.

Gabriel is struggling. His father has passed away, he hasn't started his new novel yet, and his skin is peeling off. He is falling apart mentally and physically. Brat is an extremely well written book, sometimes horror, sometimes comedy, sometimes both. It is not afraid to take risks in telling the story and letting the reader figure out what's real and what is not.

This novel took me by complete surprise. What I had initially believed to a work of horror turned out to be a captivating and genre-bending piece of fiction, implementing a wide range of stylistic tools and a protagonist who is equal measures sympathetic and vile to keep its reader engaged. Crackling with deadpan humour and a delightful touch of auto-fiction, the story focusses on Gabriel, a twentysomething writer, as he ostensibly stays at his parents' house following the death of his father to clean out the home and to finish writing his second novel which he repeatedly claims he has nearly finished, despite never having started. He visits his grandmother several times over the course of the book, another successful novelist, and his mother, who has been put into a care home due to the onset of dementia.

The house itself provides much of the unsettling horror, from the appearance of a strange creature in the garden to the growing mould throughout the house, and it is the site in which Gabriel discovers his parents' manuscripts. His mother's work, in particular, appears to shapeshift as he reads, and tell a story that appears to emulate and twist Gabriel's own experiences. There are some particularly gruesome moments of body horror as Gabriel's own skin begins to peel away. The horror, as all the best horror does, represents concerns within modern society, particularly relevant to those in their twenties today, and I particularly enjoyed how they led back to feelings quintessential to being young: the fear of setting a specific course, and leaving all your other choices behind, and of shedding previous selves. Indeed, as an unreliable narrator himself, Gabriel's shift into clarity, and understanding of the difference in perception, marks a change in tone in the novel from the previous dread and perfectly emulates the experiences of growing up, and learning to navigate in a world where everyone's perception is different. All this is achieved while also providing a very unsettling and disturbing backdrop as Gabriel also attempts to navigate the death of his father and the impending loss his family home.

The relationships in this novel, while seen entirely through Gabriel's eyes, are also crisply drawn, from the wry conversations with his grandmother, a fellow novelist who shares his viewpoint and whose conversations are echoed with his mother, another creative, to the sharper conversations with his logical brother, true emotion hidden behind the rough and definitely politically incorrect banter of two young boys. Indeed, the writing is both lyrical and arch. The stylistic choice to move jarringly from moment to moment, perfectly emulates Gabriel's sudden moves from consciousness to unconsciousness and his, often drug-induced, zoning out, forcing the reader to experience the sudden shift to a different conversation, a different moment, and further unsettling the narrative rhythm.

This book feels akin to if Bret Easton Ellis did horror for a Gen Z wastrel. It’s genius, it’s nimble and yet weighty, and it conveys much with such smooth and captivating prose. I cannot recommend this book enough!

“Standing very close to the deer-man, watching over his shoulder as he used the rusty shears to endlessly prune the growing dream plants.”
After the death of his father and with his mother in a care home, Gabriel is tasked by his brother with making the family home ready to be sold. Himself an aspiring, if lazy, author and confronted with a house full of manuscripts written by his parents, he does not exactly rise to the challenge and his drug- and alcohol-fuelled nightmares blend into a weird selection of realities.

Note to readers:
Do not be squeamish about skin issues or penis issues.
Do not get nightmares.
Do not inspect your house for signs of deterioration.
Do not do drugs or alcohol.
Do not accept pills from strangers.
Do not go to the ramshackle shed down the garden.
Beware of manuscripts that are changing their plot.

Brat by Gabriel Smith is unusual and quirky but in a really good way. I think if you enjoyed reading Kevin Wilson or Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth or Death Valley by Melissa Broder then you will appreciate this.