A very happy publication day to Dizz Tate and her debut novel, Brutes, which has been published by Faber in the UK and Catapult in the US.
The novel was sold to Faber in a five-way auction and the reception Brutes is receiving shows why there was so much publisher interest in Dizz’s work. Author Sophie Mackintosh calls the novel: “Polyphonically technicolour and lushly textured, Brutes is a defiant elegy to the myth of girlhood innocence. Dizz Tate’s talent is brazen – and brilliant.”
Reviewing the novel in The Times, Laura Hackett writes: “It has been a long time since I read a novel that so viscerally evoked a feeling of place… An astonishing debut that will burrow under your skin.”
Author, Mariana Enriquez says: “Brutes is a beautiful and deeply strange novel, full of dread and longing.”
And author, Kimberly King Parsons, is equally full of praise, saying: “A masterful sentence maker, Tate is a startling and singular new voice, and her debut novel is so taut and intense it might just catch fire.”
From Faber’s website: “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.”
Huge congratulations to Dizz. We hope Brutes finds many, many readers.
Dizz Tate won the 2018 Bristol Short Story Prize with her story, Cowboy Boot. It is published in our Volume 11 anthology.