Book Review: "Brutes" by Dizz Tate

I honestly did not know what to expect when I picked up this book. I had read several reviews on it but none of them seemed to know what the actual storyline was. It was called a book that was well written, but had no plot. I truly do like fiction that pushes some sort of boundary of what is expected of it and so, I thought I would give it a go and try to find out what was going on in this book. I found it more difficult that I had planned and so, what you are about to hear of the plot is my interpretation of what may have happened here filled in with details that are taken straight from the book. If you have a different opinion of what you think happened, don't be afraid to say something and discuss the plot of this strange but brilliantly crafted novel.

From the very start of the book, we get a very strangely poetic atmosphere of a girl's disappearance. Her name is Sammy and she is gone. We see the mothers of this group of young girls (and one boy) go and look for her around the town, in the woods and all through this time, we observe the story through the collective "we" of the group of children. We see the rumours of what may have happened to her, the way her father was a famed preacher, the way her parents were so overprotective that it was wildly abusive to treat a young child like that. However, Sammy ends up shaving all her hair off to the skin and all of a sudden, she is gone.

But if you think that the book is all about this then you're mistaken because then, after all this collective presenting at sites where adults whisper to each other, we are taken to sisters visiting and upturning metaphorical stones to see what really goes on in the forsaken town where they grew up. It is clear that this book has a message which cautions women against trusting men or finding them to be inherently good - but then again, it doesn't make a point of telling us the girls are inherently good either. It is as though everyone has a stroke of evil in them and then, in the threads of the story's fabric there's still that echoing question: Where is she?

Sammy was never found and yet, the story remains an unhinged reminder or warning of what dark tales may lie in a town where everyone knows each other, where people are so close and where young girls can turn brutal upon each other - even without fully knowing it. So, if you're going to read this text then you better get ready for there being (as Donalbain says in Macbeth) 'daggers in men's smiles' as deception and wickedness manipulate the atmosphere. Without giving too much of the game away, I think more than one reader (including myself) has been linking the events in this book to an infamous character in reality who may, or may not, have killed himself before facing his crimes head on. And by god, were there a lot of crimes.

The author makes the grand point of telling the story from the points of view of those not directly connected to the main thread, but each of whom serve to have a major impact on what happens later on. This I find is very interesting because it allows the story to develop and slowly envelope these characters, proving to us that the plot line we read at the beginning was only one thread in a fabric of stories which roll together and continue on into the haunting abyss of abusive constructs. A brilliantly constructed novel, it tells the story of a group of girls, all coming of age and all in the same boat, all at the same time. But once they get jobs, move away and start their own lives - things become uneasy and they must begin to turn back around and see where they must confront a past that was so difficult to see. This connects the first thread to future ones.

In conclusion, though it was confusing to read, I love the way the book unfolds itself to slowly reveal the storyline without giving everything away at once. For a short book it burns really slowly and most of it is up to the reader to infer, but infer we will and so - that is the conclusion I have come to. It is a story about brutality.