Genre: Literary Fiction
Published: Simon & Schuster, June 2024
My Rating: 1/5 stars
Remember when Ottessa Moshfegh did "unhinged, spoiled and selfobsessed protagonist deals with grief in the worst and most detestable way possible" with My Year of Rest and Relaxation? I do, and I hated it.
Now imagine that concept, but with a male protagonist, who is even more emotionally immature and isn't so much obsessed with himself, but more so with his own genitals. That's Brat and I hated it even more.
The story:
Brat is the story of the unraveling sanity of our twenty-something-year old protagonist Gabriel, as his formerly perfect life crumbles apart. Once a young writer deemed to be brimming with potential, he hasn’t been able to commit a single sentence to paper towards his latest (far overdue) manuscript. His father has died, his mother is in a care home and his (ex-?) girlfriend won’t answer his calls. Gabriel decides to move into his parents dilapidated old house, in order to clean up his affairs, only to find strange events chasing him there. His family home might be haunted by a man in a deer-costume, strange versions of his manuscript are turning up around the house and on top of it all, Gabriels skin is sloughing off…
What I liked:
Look, I see what the author did here, and I appreciate the concept. I’m all for a modern take on the haunted house as an exploration of the effects of grief on ones’ sanity. There are quite a few cool concepts and allegories in here that, in the hands of a different author, might have worked for me. In the hands of Gabriel Smith however, they didn’t.
What I didn’t like:
It all begins with the writing-style. This is the most staccato, stilted and clinical prose I’ve ever encountered in fiction, and it’s not in a good way. I genuinely don’t understand how so many people are praising this books “lyricism”, as there’s nothing about the writing that justified that descriptor for me. Stilted, lacking rhythm and repetitive in every way (from individual word-choice to complete paragraphs); I struggled to finish it.
Then there’s the protagonist. If you want to know about his character; look no further than the novel’s title. He’s not just a brat though… This man is the most self-obsessed, disgusting and immature pest, with a strange fascination for his own genitals more suiting to s 3-year-old, I’ve ever encountered. YES, I understand it’s intentional, but that doesn’t make it GOOD writing. The vulgarity and self-obsessive-vibe doesn’t extend to the protagonists narrative voice either, which is where the book truly lost me. It’s everywhere: in the sentences on page, and in all the choices behind them. I have no way of backing this, but here’s what this book felt like:
there’s a certain category of modern authors that describe themselves as “provocative” and “pushing boundaries”, by which they mean being vulgar for the sake of it, and tossing slurs and grotesque imagery out there to provoke a reaction from the reader. Only to then praise themselves for how “intellectual” their novel is (preferably in the scenes where the character was having uncomfortable sex or jerking off on page…). It’s thát impression that Gabriel Smith gives through his debut, having me doubt if maybe the title of the novel is a little auto-fictional too…
There are some literary fiction novels where I feel like maybe “I didn’t get it”, which is why it didn’t work for me. In the case of Brat: I fully got it alright. I just hated it…
You can find this book here on Goodreads.
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