Gabriel Smith
Story Stream
The Comfort of Memory August 30, 2024
IT LOOKS LIKE we’re coming to the end of “alt-lit.” The party’s over. People have had enough affectless prose, enough internet-mediated self-discovery, enough lowercase autofiction to last a lifetime. They’re tired of the style, but more importantly ...
Attack of the Brat August 02, 2024
The word “BRAT” is ominously taped on author Jon-Jon Goulian’s front-hall wall in electric-blue gaffer’s tape. Nearby, “DON’T SELL THE HOUSE,” in bold, block letters, reads like a ransom note. Goulian, his head shaved and sinewy body well-tatted, has...
On Gabriel Smith’s “Brat” July 24, 2024
“Hi Gabriel,” the email begins. “My name is Charli - perhaps you know my music, which I put out under the name ‘Charli XCX.’”Charli is writing to ask Gabriel a question. The question is about her new album, which she plans to title Brat after Gabriel...
Zombie Land June 27, 2024
Gabriel Smith's Brat is a short novel about a young man named Gabriel who must sell his recently deceased father's house, and discovers, thanks to some fiction manuscripts and VHS tapes left behind by his parents (because the manuscripts and the tape...
How Gabriel Smith Wrote the Book of the Summer June 19, 2024
Gabriel Smith, the 28-year-old London-based novelist whose Brat is earmarked as one of the literary events of the summer—the summer of brat, if you will—is comfortable letting things bleed. The book, which is published by Penguin in North America and...
A Comedy of Terrors: Gabriel Smith’s “Brat” June 17, 2024
This novel is funny. Not witty or zany, but funny, actually funny. This is a wonderful thing. Maybe if there were more funny writers about we could stop trying to laugh at the work of a certain few. Laughing may be good for the health, but fake laugh...
Audacious Darlings of the Digital Age June 05, 2024
Although the internet-driven “alt lit” scene that sprang up in the US in the 00s never really caught on in the UK – its best-known figure is Tao Lin (Taipei, Shoplifting from American Apparel) – it quickly accrued a certain kind of insurgent glamour,...
Gabriel Smith Writes Like He Has Nothing Left to Lose June 05, 2024
The most exciting thing to encounter in the world of publishing is a writer who doesn’t sound like anyone else. I first read Gabriel Smith at the Drift, where our then fiction editor spied his story, “The Complete,” in the slush, so it’s been a thril...
House of the Spirits May 27, 2024
Reading Brat, I couldn’t escape the feeling that the ghost of publisher Giancarlo DiTrapano was following me. On the back cover of the book, Gabriel Smith declares that he “was mentored by the late Giancarlo DiTrapano.” I don’t believe I’ve ever seen...
