Brat (A Novel) - 9780593656891
List Price:
$18.00
- Availability: Confirm prior to ordering
- Branding: minimum 50 pieces (add’l costs below)
- Check Freight Rates (branded products only)
Branding Options (v), Availability & Lead Times
- 1-Color Imprint: $2.00 ea.
- Promo-Page Insert: $2.50 ea. (full-color printed, single-sided page)
- Belly-Band Wrap: $2.50 ea. (full-color printed)
- Set-Up Charge: $45 per decoration
- Availability: Product availability changes daily, so please confirm your quantity is available prior to placing an order.
- Branded Products: allow 10 business days from proof approval for production. Branding options may be limited or unavailable based on product design or cover artwork.
- Unbranded Products: allow 3-5 business days for shipping. All Unbranded items receive FREE ground shipping in the US. Inquire for international shipping.
- RETURNS/CANCELLATIONS: All orders, branded or unbranded, are NON-CANCELLABLE and NON-RETURNABLE once a purchase order has been received.
Product Details
Author:
Gabriel Smith
Format:
Paperback
Pages:
320
Publisher:
Penguin Publishing Group (June 3, 2025)
Imprint:
Penguin Books
Language:
English
Audience:
General/trade
ISBN-13:
9780593656891
ISBN-10:
059365689X
Weight:
8.2oz
Dimensions:
5.33" x 7.96" x 0.7"
File:
RandomHouse-PRH_Book_Company_PRH_PRT_Onix_full_active_D20260405T165452_155746795-20260405.xml
Folder:
RandomHouse
List Price:
$18.00
Country of Origin:
United States
Pub Discount:
65
Case Pack:
24
As low as:
$13.86
Publisher Identifier:
P-RH
Discount Code:
A
QuickShip:
Yes
Overview
“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 new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past
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.
Strange people and figures emerge—perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded fictions—and despite his compromised state (and his more successful brother’s growing frustration) Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story, flirting with the autofictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with deadpan humor and delightfully taut prose.
Gabriel Smith’s arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writers—formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent and boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, the novel that follows is muscular yet lyrical, riddled with paradox, and told with a truly rare and compelling clarity of voice. Brat is a serious debut that refuses to take itself too seriously.
“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 new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past
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.
Strange people and figures emerge—perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded fictions—and despite his compromised state (and his more successful brother’s growing frustration) Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story, flirting with the autofictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with deadpan humor and delightfully taut prose.
Gabriel Smith’s arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writers—formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent and boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, the novel that follows is muscular yet lyrical, riddled with paradox, and told with a truly rare and compelling clarity of voice. Brat is a serious debut that refuses to take itself too seriously.
