MEMOIR OF AN INNOCENT BRAT

In Wang’s novel, an unemployed Brooklynite is accused of his ex-boyfriend’s murder.

Pete Chan has had enough. It’s June 7, 2024, the beginning of Pride Month, and musician Charli XCX’s newest release, BRAT, is the perfect soundtrack for changing his life. Pete walks into his dreary office and quits his job as a communications coordinator on the spot, then heads to his boyfriend Toby’s house to quit him as well. Toby Lu is “a stereotypical artist: thirty-one, living off [Pete’s] hard-earned money.” Before the day is over, Pete’s moved out of the house owned by Toby’s wealthy dad and is living in his friend Johnny’s spare room. Through Johnny, Pete gains two more valuable things: a barista job at the cozy, plant-cluttered Volcano Café and the code to Johnny’s gun safe. Pete adores his return to barista life, but is promptly fired when he throws an iced latte into the face of a hyper-demanding customer. The incident winds up online, and soon Pete’s a viral internet icon, a “BRATista” remixed into countless Charli XCX-soundtracked videos that hail him as a fighter for service workers everywhere. A transformative night at the Charli XCX-led SWEAT tour convinces Pete to become a pop music critic, but he’s quickly castigated for his lukewarm review of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album. Hurt, he tracks down his primary digital tormentor, a Chicagoan named Frankie, and takes a road trip to a trendy Chicago cafe to confront him, carrying Johnny’s loaded gun in the backseat “just for security.” When he returns after a whirlwind weekend with the surprisingly kind—and hot—Frankie, police inform him that Toby was found shot to death, and Pete’s the primary suspect. Wang’s hyperspecific digressions on Brooklyn millennial gay life—including specialty coffee culture, hookup app etiquette, and a track-by-track breakdown of the SWEAT tour—are deeply entertaining but long-winded. Pete spends much of the novel interfacing solely with a screen, and it’s both fun and exhausting to read the play-by-plays of his digital activities, rendered in fond but frustrated detail.

A clever, hyperonline thriller heavy on the cultural commentary.