Brat

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 next book. Lonely, broke, and aimless, he agrees to move back into his parents' house to clear it out for sale. But Gabriel has trouble delivering on this promise: as the moldy, overgrown house deteriorates around him, so does his own health, and large sheets of his skin begin peeling off at an alarming rate. Soon enough, he's spiraling--drinking, taking pills, and losing touch with reality.

In fragments and figments, Gabriel takes us on a surreal journey into the mysteries of the house, where he finds an unfinished manuscript written by his mother that seems to mutate every time he picks it up and a bizarre home video that hints at long-buried secrets. Strange people and figures emerge, 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 disaffected prose. Smith's arrival inaugurates a new generation of fiction writers--formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent, provocative, and boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, Brat is a serious debut that doesn't take itself too seriously.