Gabriel Smith: Brat [2025]

THE INSTANT CULT CLASSIC FROM THE WINNER OF THE O. HENRY PRIZE

'Full of dark, deadpan humour, Brat is a raucous story of the messy, messed-up business of living, dying and having a family.' Financial Times
'A moving coming-of-age family story' Observer
'Beautifully written, hilarious, and heartbreaking' Daily Mail
'A raw, delicate tale about grief and growing up' The New Yorker
'Iconic', Radio 1
'The novel crackles with gothic horror, deadpan humor, and a damning sense of alienation that you won't soon shake.' Chicago Review of Books
'Instead of resolving his novel's many mysteries, 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.' The New York Times

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Gabriel's skin is falling off.

His dad is dead.

He owes his editor a novel.

His girlfriend won't answer his calls.

Tasked by his horribly well-adjusted brother with clearing out the family home for sale, Gabriel's sanity quickly begins to unravel. His parents' old manuscripts appear to change each time he reads them. A bizarre home video hints at long-buried secrets. And there's a hideous man in the garden.

Disquieting and hilarious, taut yet lyrical, blisteringly-paced but formally inventive, Brat is a mediation on grief, art and love that will leave you altered, breathless and desperate for more.

From a stunningly original new talent, this is a debut novel unlike anything you have read before.

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'This original, clever story is brilliant on grief, madness and creativity. It's beautifully written, hilarious and heart-breaking. I raced through it.' Daily Mail

'For readers looking for something that will grip you from start to finish, Brat is sure to be your breath of fresh air. The novel crackles with gothic horror, deadpan humor, and a damning sense of alienation that you won't soon shake.' Chicago Review of Books

'Smith's picaresque first novel is told from the perspective of Gabriel, a writer struggling with numerous issues . . . a deeply gothic work that never quite settles the reader in a certain world as Gabriel's foibles, ghostly visions, and uncertainties filter every moment. Written in short, clipped chapters and featuring uproarious dialogue (especially with Gabriel's brother), this is a darkly comic and brilliantly unusual debut.' Booklist

'[Smith's] dialogue shines . . . 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.' Kirkus

'It's a book about loss and the anxiety of the modern age, tinged with humor and deep insight that will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.' Town & Country

'Gabriel Smith has written a truly unique and surprising book. He is the rarest thing: a distinctive stylist on the line and structure level. Brat is so strange and so funny. I laughed a lot while reading.' Rachel Connolly, author of Lazy City

'Messy with glitched realities and body horror, Brat breathes the same thrillingly claustrophobic air as Inland Empire and Ubik. It's a skin-shedding ouroboros of grief and laughter, and the most brain-melting British debut I've read in ages.' Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams

'Gabriel Smith's prose is like if Joan Didion and Shirley Jackson took Xanax and used the internet. Brat is a sharp, eerie, confident debut about grief, memory, art, and so much more. Smith is a major new talent.' Jordan Castro, author of The Novelist

'Gabriel Smith's jauntily creepy and hilarious tale of a grief-stalked scapegrace's sloughing-off and regeneration of selves in the filial murk of a moldering homestead is a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for a new, quaking generation. Brat will unnerve and seduce you.' Garielle Lutz, author of Worsted

'Smith's picaresque first novel is told from the perspective of Gabriel, a writer struggling with numerous issues . . . a deeply gothic work that never quite settles the reader in a certain world as Gabriel's foibles, ghostly visions, and uncertainties filter every moment. Written in short, clipped chapters and featuring uproarious dialogue (especially with Gabriel's brother), this is a darkly comic and brilliantly unusual debut.' Booklist

'[Smith's] dialogue shines . . . 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.' Kirkus