Brat: A Novel

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 & struggling to finish writing his second book. Alone & 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, & large sheets of his skin begin to peel from his body at a terrifying rate. In fragments & 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 & a bizarre home video that hints at long-buried secrets.

Strange people & figures emerge—perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded fictions—& despite his compromised state (& 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 & delightfully taut prose.

Gabriel Smith’s arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writers—formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, & infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent & boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, the novel that follows is muscular yet lyrical, riddled with paradox, & told with a truly rare & compelling clarity of voice. Brat is a serious debut that refuses to take itself too seriously.

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The Complete will be Smith’s real-life 2nd novel.