Brutes by Dizz Tate

In Falls Landing, Florida - a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers - something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they uncover will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Through a darkly beautiful and brutally compelling lens, Dizz Tate captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood. Brutes is a novel about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the 'we' of young friendship, and the moment it is broken forever.

REVIEWS

"An impressive [read], thanks to Tate's almost frightening powers of description. It has been a long time since I read a novel that so viscerally evoked a feeling of place... it's the America of Nabokov's Lolita on acid... With its plot twists, grotesque horror and cartoonish villains, Brutes is a novel that refuses to be reasonable. That's part of its unsettling charm... An astonishing debut that will burrow under your skin." ― Sunday Times

"[A] magic realist, warped Florid a fairy tale, a Lynchian reinterpretation of The Virgin Suicides... Tate acutely captures the precariousness of girlhood, its growing pains and what it is to be "born out of rage". ― Observer

"A brooding look at girlhood like you've never encountered before." ― Evening Standard

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 978-0571374458
Pages: 240