Smith explores how this family navigates the disputed borders of its shared memories, pondering what it means to choose one story over another — as well as the consequences of refusing to choose, especially in the wake of grief ... Not every narrative thread is resolved as cleanly as Gabriel’s is, or even tied up at all, but that’s OK too. Perhaps those endings can only be found in another novel, or another world.
As a reader of a book like this, you don’t want to be a rube, like Gabriel’s brother, and ask that everything make sense. This is hip gothic ... There are many moments of deadpan humor here. Deadpan is the predominant affect; the prose is almost absurdly minimalist ... I’m not sure that DiTrapano would have approved. It will be interesting to see if Brat finds a general readership, achieving the kind of breakout status that the advance buzz seems to predict.
The novel brings a Generation Z spin to modern ennui—and it reads surprisingly similar to the old millennial one ... Frustrating ... Too many moments in the novel come off as a self-aware thumbing of the nose ... If there is nothing else that characterizes a certain strain of the contemporary novel, it is a feigned sophistication that shirks the convictions required for a book to endure ... Though we have here a book that is conscious of itself as a book, it is often without linguistic precision or pleasure.
The story...is big ... It makes sense in a very technical way that this is how the bereaved Gabriel would communicate, but it still seems like a bleak proposition for a novel where plot functions almost as an excuse for flat writing ... In the end, Smith squares form and content in his own way—he is indeed a brat, petulantly refusing to write in the manner that might be expected of him.
Peel away the adversarial trappings and spooky meta styling and there’s a moving coming-of-age family story here ... While we’re never sure whether what we’re reading is merely a grief-fuelled hallucination, there’s also the nagging sense that such questions represent a feint on Smith’s part. As the knot tightens, the ghoulish body horror and endlessly recursive stories-within-stories come to seem a kind of procrastinatory defence mechanism against the possibility of genuine emotion ... It sometimes feels like it’s been put into the world before quite being ready.
Picaresque ... Written in short, clipped chapters and featuring uproarious dialogue (especially with Gabriel’s brother), this is a darkly comic and brilliantly unusual debut.
Bizarre ... While his prose can be unadorned to a fault at times, his dialogue shines, and there’s an undercurrent of humor throughout that leavens the book’s darkness ... This novel isn’t for everyone, but readers who appreciate the morbidly funny and the just plain morbid will find a lot to love in these pages. A weird and darkly funny novel from a writer to watch.
