Dizz Tate
Brutes
Faber, 2023
The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project in this wildly original debut-a coming-of-age story about the crucible of girlhood, from a writer of rare and startling talent.
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 forthe 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.
About the Author
Dizz Tate was born in 1993 in London and grew up in Orlando, Florida. Her short stories have appeared in The Stinging Fly, Dazed, Five Dials and No Tokens Journal, amongst others. She won the Bristol Short Story Prize in 2018. For her story 'Harpies', she won Best Original Fiction in the Stack magazine awards in 2019, and in 2020, she was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award.