#dizz tate

[flowerytale]

Dizz Tate, from Brutes

[that-one-girls-blog-posts]

Book haul ! (some used, some new...)

[queer-whatchamacallit]

So I read Brutes by Dizz Tate, and it was a 5/5 ⭐️ for me :]

BIG spoilers below

The vast majority of why I read something is for a good writing style. Brutes feels sticky and sweat-stained and sun-bleached, and every description felt like something new and visceral. I’m not someone who gets unable to put down a book, but this would make me go between almost hypnotized and needing to put it down and stare at a wall. Some of my favorite sections were the lists of anecdotes from the girls, times that they were called brutes and times that they had been touched (and I think there was another?), because each one is so specific and personal, and I feel like I can imagine the story surrounding each one.

If Brutes gets translated into languages with inclusive vs. exclusive “we,” I hope it uses inclusive (including the reader in that “we”) because I was so entirely sucked into the minds of these girls (no matter how uncanny and cruel they could be) that I felt myself caring about whatever they cared about. I, a lesbian, found myself completely and entirely enraptured by the Lake Boy. I felt myself desperate for Leila to let them back in when Mia was leading her around, and when they were alone, it scared me.

The switch to “I” literally made my stomach drop. I can’t even convey how uncomfortable and skin-crawling and terrifying that was. I’m not sure if I missed who it was that got left behind or if it was intentionally left unclear, but either way, that whole scene felt disgusting and was executed perfectly

For the individual chapters, I felt like I wasn’t going to like them because Hazel’s didn’t do it for me, and then the way Brittney talked about the dark and how she does dangerous things to see if she can get away with it was exactly what I wanted. I wonder if Jody’s chapter at the end signifies that it was her left alone with Stone because she was forced and reshaped into something older with more power and ability than a 13 year old does, so she’s put at the same level as all the other individual chapters.

I love how details of the ending slowly unfold, the Lake Monster in Hazels chapter, the thigh mark in Brittney’s, the reveal early on that the brutes know where Sammy is. Nearly everything about the Lake Monster and the Lake Boy was absolutely fascinating to me, and the reveal of Sammy being involved with the Lake Boy was a fun shock.

I don’t think the ending is about men really. Aside from Eddie and debatably Christian (honorary girl), men are not treated as characters in their own right but things that happen to women.

The Lake Monster is one of the Brutes. They seem to have a kinship with it, urging it to just close its eyes, knowing it’s dead. It is a beast that’s born from and poisoned by Falls Landing that had no chance of ever recovering from what that town has done to it.

And suddenly it’s alone with a man with a knife that splits it open, blames it for something it couldn’t have possibly done.

The Brutes think that Sammy should have gotten to burn her old self down instead of the Lake Boy, and then the Lake Monster/Brute burns its Lake for what it did to it, to all of them.

I think the leech was representative of Falls Landing. It crawled inside of Sammy and bled her dry until she was able to get out of there.

I think Brutes encourages the catharsis of burning down the person you used to be, burning down the ways you were punished for things that weren’t wrong, and grow up into something that is entirely yours

[beatrizonfilm]

BRUTES BY DIZZ TATE

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

We would not be born out of sweetness, we were born out of rage, we felt it in our bones.

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 see 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.

[newvision]

web weaving on “child’s innocence” pls! Thankyou!

Our mothers are so innocent. They don’t know anything about our fierce attachments, our hatching hearts.

Laughter, softness, sweetness and surprise,

Laura Marling, Song For Our Daughter :: Katja Kemnitz, too much love” :: Dizz Tate, Brutes :: Macke August, Walter 3 Tage :: Marya Zaturenska, from The Collected Poems; “Children of the Island,” :: Eugène Carrière, Sleep :: Benedict Wells, the end of loneliness

kofi

[lavenderhottie]

There is a specifically Floridan smell, the stink of America (microwaved plastic, air freshener, hot oil) mixed with mildew and something else, something ancient, rotting, and sweaty, possibly life.

Brutes, Dizz Tate

[frannyglasses]

reading reviews about brutes by dizz tate after reading the book really reminded me why its so important to pick books out blindly sometimes. literary criticism is soooo dead like what do you mean you understood nothing of this? it had some of the simplest arcs ever (true that the metaphors were detailed and unclear but not understanding a metaphor doesn’t mean you haven’t understood anything)

[rainyafternun]

''my love for him had been so pure and desperate, like a smudgy gel pen heart''

- brutes, dizz tate