Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Brutes

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Brutes by Dizz Tate

33 reviews

jane_moriarty's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Feral Girl Summer: book edition. Do you remember the days when you ran around with a crew of kids, never anything to do, always in the way of the grown-ups and still invisible at the same time? The horizon of your neighbourhood so narrow and yet the world of the adults so mysterious?

This book perfectly conveys the feeling of those days. It feels more like a movie (maybe a Harmony Korine one?), drifting through the setting of endless Florida summer with dark clouds gathering, seen through the collective eyes of a group of thirteen year old girls who keep a close watch on everything happening in their neighbourhood. While the girls seem to understand more about the events than the adults around them, they are at the same time cut off from forming a full picture, the way children are.

Maybe this discrepancy is the reason why it seems like the book has no plot. We are left with a hazy feeling and a vague grasp of what seems to have happened. The inbetween chapters from the girls grown-up (very depressing) perspective hardly change that. I think I would have liked less metaphors and more plot resolutions, but the descriptions of the weirdness of girlhood and the Florida Gothic Ethel Cain vibes were so so good, the writing just sucked me in. Next Dizz Tate publication will be preordered.

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brotestantethic's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Best read of the year so far. I’m not understanding why other reviews say this book doesn’t have a plot. It can be a bit confusing and separated, but there is a clear plot. Brutes is honest to the primal wants of the thirteen year old girl. I loved how the girls moved in a pack, “we” being the primary pronoun used throughout the book besides

in the characters’ future spotlights and during Jody’s assault.

The use of we and then lack thereof is central to the novel’s themes of sameness and apartness.

This is a book about surviving written for survivors of violence. The most gutting and realistic depiction of retaliatory anger lives in

Britney’s chapter, pages 117 to 127. I was then surprised to find it was Jody in the room at the end. There’s a lot of inconsistencies like that, such as what Mia tells Christian about paying for the services, which contributes further to the morphed perspective many survivors have after an event.

I was not surprised to learn Tate grew up in Florida. The text reads like a conflicted love letter to her hometown. There are some truly beautiful disgusting descriptions of the Floridian landscape.

Ending will take some time to digest, for sure!

Content Warnings

boliv3's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

reads like a fever dream. dark and uncomfortable, but kind of all over the place plot wise. it’s a sad coming-of-age story though i’m not sure i fully understand what happened. everyone was unhinged. Reminded me of Earthlings.

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kpcrossy's review against another edition

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3.0

3/5 ⭐️: dark coming of age story that follows a gang of five girls and a queer boy (the titular ‘brutes’) in small-town Florida. When a young girl called Sammy disappears, the ‘brutes’ watch their neighbours mobilise to search for her, all the while harbouring a secret: they know where Sammy is, but they’re so unsuspecting that no-one believes them. It took me a while to get into this, as the story is (mostly) told in first-person plural. There are chapters set in the future, allowing each member of the group an individual voice to look back on the summer when Sammy disappeared. I found the story difficult to follow when the narrative splintered off, since there was no individual character development up until that point. I also couldn’t get my head around its supernatural elements, and by the end I had no idea what was happening! Having said that, I think this is just one of those books that leaves you wondering. I liked that this story took a different and unexpected approach to the ‘coming of age in a small town’ trope.

Content Warnings