Brat - Hardcover

Smith, Gabriel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593656873 ISBN 13: 9780593656877

Verlag: Penguin Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

“Brat is a raucous story of the messy, messed-up business of living, dying and having a family.” —Financial Times

“The novel crackles with gothic horror, deadpan humor, and a damning sense of alienation that you won’t soon shake.” —Chicago Review of Books

From a provocative literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past

We meet our ill-tempered protagonist—the titular “brat”—at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. Gabriel is mourning the death of his father as well as a recent breakup and struggling to ?nish writing his second book. Alone and aimless, he agrees to move back into his parents’ house to clear it out for sale.

In fragments and ?gments, Gabriel takes us on a surreal journey into the mysteries of the family home, where he ?nds un?nished 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. Strange people and ?gures emerge—perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded ?ctions—but despite his compromised state, Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story, ?irting with the auto-?ctional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with dead-pan humor and delightfully taut prose, heralding the next generation of ?ction—formally inventive, in?uenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gabriel Smith is an author living in London. A winner of the 2023 PEN/O. Henry Award, his fiction has appeared in The Drift, New York Tyrant Magazine, and The Moth. He was mentored by the late Giancarlo DiTrapano of Tyrant Books.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I was in the waiting room. Then I was in the examination room. There was a chair, and another chair, and a hydraulic doctor bed. Sit down, the doctor said. I didn't know where. Not on the bed, he said. I sat on a chair.

"I think I have a concussion," I said.

"Why do you think that?" the doctor said.

"My nephew hit me."

"He hit you?"

"In the nose. Then in the back of the head."

"How old is he?" the doctor said.

"Fourteen," I said.

"Okay," he said, "take off your shirt."

"Really?" I said.

"Sure," the doctor said. I unbuttoned my shirt.

He shone a light in my eyes.

The light was on the end of a cone. The cone was set at ninety degrees on the end of a metal rod. It looked like a thing dentists use for looking at mouths.

"No concussion," the doctor said. It didn't seem like he could tell that just by shining a cone in my eyes.

"Looks like you have a little eczema here, though," he said. He pointed to my chest then spun away in his chair.

I looked down at myself. There was a red patch, and what looked like a slightly raised piece of dead skin in the center of my chest. Just to the right of where I assumed my heart was.

"Okay," I said.

"Don't worry," he said, looking at his computer, "very treatable. I'm writing you a prescription. For hydrocortisol cream."

"Don't you mean hydrocortisone?"

"Yes," he said, "hydrocortisone. That is what I said."

My brother's wife, when I was back at the house, said I shouldn't have provoked him.

"He's very sensitive," she said.

"What?" I said. "I didn't provoke him."

"He loved your dad," my brother's wife said. "They had a real connection."

"I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Are you really going to wear that outfit?" she said. I was wearing a T-shirt with lots of Phils on it: Phil Leotardo, Phil Neville, the Philippines, the concept of "Philanthropy," Philadelphia (the spread), the London Philharmonic, Prince Philip.

"What?" I said. "No. I am going to wear a suit."

"It has a stain on it. You can't wear that."

"I am going to change," I said.

My brother walked into the kitchen and kissed his wife on the forehead as she walked out of it. He started doing something in a cupboard.

"You should wear the Phil T-shirt to Dad's funeral," he said.

"I am going to change," I said, and left the room.

I looked at myself in the half-steamed bathroom mirror. This was the house I grew up in.

The doctor was right about the skin on my chest, just to the right of where I assumed my heart was. It looked all weird.

I picked at the skin. It came away painlessly.

Just a little at first. It made a thick and translucent white flap. I flicked at it with my fingernail. I pulled at it. More pulled away like damp paper. Over my left nipple, then right up to my armpit.

It started to sting a little like it was meant to stay on. I stopped tearing myself. The skin just hung there.

Then I kept going.

I couldn't walk around with half my chest hanging off me.

Once I'd torn it mostly off, I had an alarmingly large piece of skin in my hands. I looked at it.

It was me but losing its shape, still slightly ridged where it had run over my rib cage.

I looked at my body in the mirror.

There was a long rift where I'd removed the dead skin. It poked outward, up the side of me, almost imperceptibly, like the unfindable edge of a Sellotape roll.

I didn't know what to do with the skin that had come off. I couldn't leave it in the bathroom bin where my brother or his wife would find it. And I didn't want to flush it, either.

I thought about putting it in my pocket and taking it downstairs and wrapping it in a plastic bag and disposing of it secretly. But that felt insane. And I didn't want to get caught doing it.

I dropped the skin into the bathtub. It made a slap sound.

I turned the showerhead on all the way. I pointed it at the skin. After a moment it began to break apart, as if decomposing, and the tiny pieces of it were carried by the spiraling water down the sloping porcelain, down into the plughole.

After the funeral, at the wake, which was at the house, my nephew apologized for punching me.

"I'm sorry for punching you in your head," he said.

"No problem," I said.

"I just get so angry sometimes," he said.

"Right," I said.

"Don't you?" he said.

I poured myself more wine from the bottle I was guarding from everyone else. The new skin was tender under my shirt, under my jacket.

The living room was large but full of mourners. My uncle by marriage was holding court on refreshments.

"Yes, I borrowed it from work," he said. "From the work canteen."

He was talking about a large metal urn that stored and dispensed near-boiling water.

"I thought a lot of people would want tea," my uncle said, "and that this would make it easier."

"It must have been hard to get here," I said, "with all the hot water in."

"What?" he said.

"Imagine if it spilled on someone," I said. "They'd get all burned."

"No," he said, "you don't transport it full. That'd be dangerous."

"That's what I'm saying," I said.

"What are you doing for work at the moment?" he said. "Still writing? Like your parents?"

"Yeah," I said.

"And the money's all right? I read an article about how books don't make money anymore. Barely any of you make any money."

My brother walked over. He was holding a glass of wine and a beer.

"I see you have two drinks," I said, to him. "Nice."

He tried to hand the beer to my uncle, who put his palms up and made a goofy face, then mimed driving a car.

"Thanks for apologizing to your nephew," my brother said, to me.

"I didn't," I said.

"He really appreciated it."

"I didn't apologize. He apologized to me."

"Sure," my brother said.

"Hey," I said. "Some of my skin came off earlier."

My brother was a plastic surgeon. That was his job.

"What?" he said.

"In the shower. Like a reptile."

"Your skin came off?"

"Like a reptile," I repeated.

"That sounds like eczema. You should see a doctor."

"You are a doctor."

"I'm not a skin doctor."

"You are a skin doctor."

"No, I'm not. I'm a surgeon. I'm not looking at your eczema skin."

"I saw a doctor today," I said, "and he gave me a cream." I tried to pour myself more wine from my bottle but it was empty.

"So use the cream," my brother said.

I walked away to get another drink.

Back in the kitchen, a neighbor from down the road said it had been a beautiful ceremony.

"That was a beautiful ceremony," she said.

She was older than sixty and wore purple all the time. Even to funerals.

"It was?" I said. But she thought I was just agreeing.

"He would have loved it."

"He would have?"

"He would have found it very moving."

"I thought he might have found it disappointing," I said, "being dead."

"Yes, he would have found it very moving," she said. "He was a very emotional man. A true artist."

I thought about my father in the audience of my brother's school flute recital, holding a biro and the photocopied program, ticking off each act as it finished.

I thought about my father in the audience of my brother's school prize-giving, slumped. I thought about him sitting up, suddenly, when a small girl, maybe nine, won an award for "dance." I thought about him saying loudly, incredulously-loud enough for parents to shush him-"Darts?"

"You knew him pretty well," I said.

"We had a connection," she said. "He was a true artist."

I looked around for a different...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593656873
• ISBN 13: 9780593656877
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 306
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar