RaveCleveland Review of BooksTension between the group and the individual propels the novel forward. The girls test the boundaries of their own pain, experiences that are necessarily individual, even when witnessed by the other members of the group ... Brutes resembles what Eugenides’ novel might have been like from the Lisbon girls’ perspective: that of the inscrutable subject turning the lens outward and becoming the watcher ... Confronts the weird, the gross, and the downright bizarre truths of adolescence. In its depiction of girlhood, Brutes eschews the sugar-and-spice trope in favor of split earlobes from a botched piercing, of hiding dead wasps in their mothers’ purses, of an ominous creature lurking in the lake.
