Brat

A Novel

By: Gabriel Smith

Narrated by: Gabriel Smith

“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 literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past

We meet our ill-tempered protagonist—the titular “brat”—at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. Gabriel 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.

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—but despite his compromised state, Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story, flirting with the auto-fictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with dead-pan humor and delightfully taut prose, heralding the next generation of fiction—formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation.

Phenomenal Writer

I first learned of Gabriel Smith in a collection of the best 2023 stories. I loved his entertaining writing so much I bought this first novel. It surprised and delights and kept me riveted. I highly recommend this.

Brat Summer?

Don't crank it so hard your skin falls off. Only crank it hard enough to destroy some priceless art.