Brutes by Dizz Tate
Dizz Tate's debut novel builds on a history of American coming-of-age fiction, from The Virgin Suicides to We Were Liars, to examine the ferocious claustrophobia of adolescence
Teenage girlhood is a special kind of hell, one that is expressed with precision and claustrophobia in Dizz Tate’s debut novel, Brutes. In Falls Landing, Florida, a place that everyone wants to leave yet no one seems quite able to, a girl has gone missing. As the adults search the Floridian swamps for the absent Sammy, a gang of her classmates are watching from afar. In the sweltering humidity, the girls – and a boy – guard Sammy’s secret, and venture into their parents’ strange and dangerous world.
The plot of Brutes echoes other popular psychological, coming-of-age American novels, like The Virgin Suicides and We Were Liars. Tate employs a hypnotic, collective choral voice to tell the teenage parts of the narrative, with her young characters speaking as a singular “we”. It’s an inventive way to convey the co-dependence of adolescence, a self-abnegation that the girls cling to for protection and identity. Other sections of the novel carve out space for each individual character as an adult, reckoning with the aftermath of what happened to Sammy – and themselves.
Tate’s writing is expressive and sharp as the girls navigate a world that now perceives them as women; a boy’s nipples are “like stickers” they want to place in their school diaries, while the worst thing in their world is to feel “fatherly”. Occasionally, the narrative lurches a little heavily into timeworn tropes, but Brutes is an impressive, atmospheric debut, told with stylish ferocity.
Faber, 2 Feb
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