Gen Z alienation
Gabriel, the moody protagonist in Gabriel Smith’s irreverent debut novel, Brat, has not quite hit rock bottom but he’s close. Grappling with his father’s death and a recent break-up, he’s struggling to finish his second book. Alone and directionless, he decides to move back into his parents’ house to clear it out for sale.
As the house falls apart around him, so does his health. Large layers of his skin start peeling off at an alarming rate: “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.”
Through a series of fragmented and surreal episodes, Gabriel takes us on a bizarre journey into the family home’s mysteries. Unfinished manuscripts by his parents seem to change each time he picks them up; a strange home video hints at dark, long-hidden secrets; ghostly figures emerge.
Brat personifies Gen Z alienation. Smith’s inventive writing style mirrors the brevity and immediacy of social media platforms, drawing on deadpan humour and gothic horror to explore grief and art.
“Gabriel Smith’s prose is like if Joan Didion and Shirley Jackson took Xanax and used the internet. Brat is a sharp, eerie, confident debut about grief, memory, art and so much more. Smith is a major new talent,” says Jordan Castro, author of The Novelist.
In pursuit of a prodigy
In Joseph O’Neill’s breakthrough novel Netherland (2008), a New York-based tribute to cricket, he tracked one man’s desire to build an arena in Brooklyn. In Godwin, his latest exceptional novel, he turns his focus to soccer.
The story begins with Lakesha Williams, a co-founder of a technical writing co-operative in Pittsburgh, and her struggles in dealing with a difficult colleague, Mark Wolfe. As the narrative progresses, Mark’s younger half-brother, Geoffrey Anibal, reaches out to him for help in finding the soccer prodigy, Godwin. Geoffrey, an inexperienced sports agent and a bit of a crook, sees Godwin as his ticket to success. Reluctantly, Mark becomes involved in this monkey business.
O’Neill skilfully infuses his brand of humour into the emotionally charged interactions between the brothers and the escalating office tension at the co-operative. Geoffrey and Mark enlist Jean-Luc Lefebvre, a seasoned French soccer agent, to help find Godwin. Their journey leads them on an African adventure, vividly narrated by Lefebvre, exposing greed and corruption in sports recruitment and the legacy of colonialism.
Seeking redemption in a country on fire
The New York Times describes Chigozie Obioma’s The Road to the Country as “a sweeping, heart-racing, mystical novel about a university student in Lagos trying to save his brother, and himself, amid the chaos of Nigeria’s civil war — a story of love, friendship and personal triumph by the two-time Booker Prize finalist and ‘the heir to Chinua Achebe’”.
Adekunle Aromire’s mother claims he’s cursed. She believes his neglect caused a car accident that almost killed his younger brother, Tunde, when they were nine and six. Years later, in 1967, Kunle, now a recent college graduate, learns that Tunde has moved to the new separatist state of Biafra with a woman. Stricken with guilt and worried for his brother’s safety, Kunle joins a Red Cross group, one of the few ways a Nigerian can safely enter the region. But when Kunle gets separated from the group, he is forced to join the army of Biafran soldiers. Kunle and his fellow soldiers quickly become hardened and demoralised, questioning the intentions of the generals and mercenaries who give them orders.
Obioma’s depiction of Biafra’s two-year war with Nigeria — a brutal and ultimately failed conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians — is marked by his unflinching portrayal of the violence. A combat zone romance and Kunle’s unwavering commitment to finding Tunde provide some relief in this masterful war novel.
A queer coming of age
In Santiago Jose Sanchez’s Hombrecito, “little man”, a mother takes a boy and his brother from Colombia to the US. Leaving their absent father behind, she too disappears once they arrive in Miami.
The boy fully embraces his queerness just as he does his new home, though not without a profound sense of loss. As he grows into a young man, he moves from one bed to another, seeking something to make him whole again. When his mother invites him to visit family in Colombia, he accepts, hoping to make peace with his father, his homeland and the person he has become.
Sanchez’s debut novel is a poignant portrayal of a young person caught between cultures and conflicting perceptions of the self.
Xochitl Gonzalez, author of Olga Dies Dreaming, describes Hombrecito as “dynamic, electrifying and oh so tender, [it] is the rare kind of page-turner I devoured in two sittings. Utterly American and Colombian, this is a magnificent story for anyone on a mission to redefine home, loss and love in all its complicated forms and sources.”
Animals that live among us
Julia Phillips’ Bear is a mythical, richly imagined story about the bond between sisters, the complexities of nature and human nature, and the boundaries between the two.
Born and raised on the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, sisters Sam and Elena and their dying mother struggle to make ends meet. Sam works on the ferry transporting wealthy mainlanders to their holiday homes, while Elena is a bartender at the local golf club.
One night, Sam — suspicious of everyone but her sister — sees a bear swimming in the dark waters of the channel. When the bear shows up near their home, the sisters are divided by their reaction to the intruder. Sam is terrified of the creature and becomes more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena is enchanted by the bear’s presence. She begins to feed him, imagining him as a lucky charm that adds some magic to their working-class lives. When she starts questioning their desire to escape, she puts at risk their dreams of a better life elsewhere.
Jessamine Chan says: “Julia Phillips’ rare and marvellous new novel weaves fairy tale magic into a story of sisterhood, daughterhood, care and devotion. Building with quiet fury to its astonishing ending, Bear will capture your heart and mind. I read in a state of wonder.”
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