Brutes by Dizz Tate (2023)
- Abby Kernya
- Jun 7
- 3 min read
by Abbigale Kernya, for The 44 North
Managing Editor
Recommended Age: 13+ readers
Rating Scale
Educational value: 3/5
Positive message: 3/5
Positive role models: 2/5
Violence: 4/5
Sex: 4/5
Language: 5/5
Drinking, drugs, smoking: 5/5
Consumerism: 2/5
“I would love to be cold but it is difficult for a woman. People seem to see warmth in me even when I offer none.”
―Dizz Tate, Brutes
I’ve been thinking a lot about how much cooler I was as a teenager. I was spunky and rebellious and full of the possibility that my life was on the brink of beginning.
I think, at the same time, while my teenage self would definitely be shocked at the introverted grandmother we’ve become in our twenties, my tween self would be rather mystified.
Girlhood is a fascinating shade of nostalgia. As I am about to graduate and begin my life on the West Coast with my partner, my childhood self is at the forefront of my mind. Would she be proud of me? Have I done enough for her? Did I forget her?
It’s hard to remember that little girl that ran around in boy shorts with a pixie cut and didn’t care who she ran over in her quest to taste the world. She was all the fire that turned sour in her teenage years and the solitary observer that fuels her adulthood.
What I do remember about her, besides all of the vague personality traits that bloomed into who I am now, as I am typing this, is that she was a brute. She spoke her mind and took what she wanted and was so hungry to eat the world staring back at her. It earned her the selfish title, the spoiled card, and the constant confusion as to why adults in her life didn’t like her.
It was lonely, but it was also the most freeing feeling in the world to operate on your own rules.
When I read Dizz Tate’s Brutes last fall, the girls in the novel instantly reminded me of that awkward kid still inside me. The exploration of girlhood in her novel centres around a group of tweens during the sudden disappearance of another cooler, rebellious girl. Set in Florida and all the exploited glitz and glamour around Florida child beauty pageants, you really don’t have much of an idea of what's going on, except somewhere on the page, you are looking at these cruel, unforgiving pre-teens as someone you once were.
A friend once told me that Brutes is like if the Virgin Suicides and Bunny had one weird, somewhat psychopathic baby together, and I could not agree more.
This book is weird and so tragic, and all it made me want to do while reading was curl up in a ball and hug my little self. It is rare when a book can inflict such raw nostalgia in me, and even rarer when it makes me want to shut it off completely. Yet, I could not tear my eyes away from this book. It had me by the neck—I needed to know what these weird perverse brutes did next, and how exactly would their story (and in a way, every girl’s story) end with that swift slash between childhood and the souring of teenage years.
I am a strong believer that everyone needs to be punched in the face sometimes—both physically and literary—and I cannot recommend Brutes enough if you are in a punchy or nostalgic sort of mood.
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