Book review: Spoiled Brats by Simon Rich

This collection of stories by the American screen-writer and novelist Simon Rich is an icy skewering of hip New York, a brutal satire of the self-obsessed and deluded ghouls who pound the trendy neighbourhoods of Brooklyn. It is also incredibly funny. The opening story, “Animals,” is a cracker (beware spoilers), a descent into despair and abject desolation as told by an under-fed school hamster. The magic realism of “Sell Out” follows an early 20th-century New York immigrant who falls into a pickling vat, wakes up in the present day and makes a killing by setting up an artisanal pop-up pickle vending cart. Rich writes himself into this story—it is to his credit that he presents himself in an entirely negative light. “Gifted” is about pushy parents who are unaware that their child is the devil (“He was just so adorable, with his pentagram birthmark and little grasping claws.”) Their crushing over-ambition causes the devil to beg to be left alone. Other stories deal with subject matter including but not limited to: an ambitious chimpanzee; the ritual sacrifice of family members; and a man so obsessed with being a trendsetter that he moves into the Brooklyn sewers, where he lives off eels. This collection is absurd, thoughtful and immensely enjoyable. The vividness of the writing is startling and the constant logical twists and narrative surprises add up to that rarest of literary phenomena—a unique voice. Serpent’s Tail, £8.99