Brat (2024) by Gabriel Smith

 Book Review

Brat (2024)

by Gabriel Smith

   I've run into people who join multiple libraries so they can get popular books faster, on the theory that people living in dipshit Arkansas aren't going to be interested in the latest- not sure if that actually works or not, but I think about every time I have to wait three months for the latest work of hot literary fiction. Such was the case with Brat by English author Gabriel Smith, which had the good fortune to be released at essentially the same time as the Charli XCX record of the same name.  He even faked an email which purported to say that Charli XCX named Brat after the novel, but that has been debunked.  Still, google this book and the first 10 returns on Google all mention the serendipity of sharing a title with THE album of the summer.

 The numbers haven't been great in the US- I imagine they are better in the UK.  Gabriel, who I surmise is the titular Brat- though the only reference is to a shirt his ex-girlfriend owned that had brat written across the front- is a writer, in his 20's.  He owes his publisher a novel, his Dad just died and his brother and sister in law want/need him to clean up the house for sale in the aftermath of Dad's death, Mom being in the later stages of dementia and confined to a home.

  Gabriel is grief-stricken, handling everything badly, and to make matters worse, large sheets of his skin are peeling off.  It sounds grosser than it actually is: the skin peels away to reveal...more skin. Gabriel haphazardly tries to figure out what is going on with his skin while he deals with a couple of neighbor teens with bad attitudes, a frightening deer-man who may or may not be stalking him with grievous intent, and his bitch sister-in-law.   There's also his Dad's marijuana grow in the attic to attend to, manuscripts and video tapes that change their content with every reading/viewing, black mold and a collapsing roof. 

  In the end there is plenty of atmosphere but only the loosest outline of a plot.  Smith is not concerned with a cohesive narrative, plainly.  It's a fun, hipster-type read and enough to keep interested in his next book, which is hopefully neither a short-story collection nor a memoir, but not a fantastic book.