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 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. Here, the clichés end. Gabriel has trouble delivering on his promises: as the moldy, overgrown house deteriorates around him, so does his own health, and large sheets of his skin begin to peel from his body at a terrifying rate. 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.
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.
