With a remarkably original narrative style, Bruiser spirits readers back to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the late 1970s. From here, we follow Bruiser on his unlikely search for meaning, solace, and eventually the seeds of a tentative, hard-won maturity. Overwhelmed by the pain and confusion of a troubled home life — his father is remote and given to irrational rages, his mother is undone by stifled artistic aspirations — Bruiser takes to the open road with Darla, a ten-year-old kindred spirit who lives across the alleyway. Their flight from the mounting tensions of home, an adventure dotted with frightening episodes and surprising revelations, is a journey in search of liberation and emotional truth, and with potentially tragic consequences.

Ian Chorão inhabits a child's particular frame of mind with acute sensitivity and startling immediacy. In the disjunction between the limitations of a young boy's awareness and our adult understanding of the circumstances lies a special poetry that is its own powerful truth, and a reminder of the often uncertain, yet painfully acute impressions that adults can make on the hearts and minds of children. In language that is both spare and potently sincere, Chorão has created a character in Bruiser that we won't soon forget.

Chorão, an extraordinarily gifted first-time novelist, achieves a lyrical intensity and psychological acuity akin to that of Henry Roth.

[A] remarkable debut....An unusually vivid snapshot of a child at the end of childhood, Bruiser marks Chorand#227;o as a major new talent.

Gripping....Exciting...convincingly depicts the inner landscape of children's fantasies and nightmares.

With a remarkably original narrative style, Bruiser spirits readers back to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the late 1970s. From here, we follow Bruiser on his unlikely search for meaning, solace, and eventually the seeds of a tentative, hard-won maturity. Overwhelmed by the pain and confusion of a troubled home life — his father is remote and given to irrational rages, his mother is undone by stifled artistic aspirations — Bruiser takes to the open road with Darla, a ten-year-old kindred spirit who lives across the alleyway. Their flight from the mounting tensions of home, an adventure dotted with frightening episodes and surprising revelations, is a journey in search of liberation and emotional truth, and with potentially tragic consequences.

Ian Chorão inhabits a child's particular frame of mind with acute sensitivity and startling immediacy. In the disjunction between the limitations of a young boy's awareness and our adult understanding of the circumstances lies a special poetry that is its own powerful truth, and a reminder of the often uncertain, yet painfully acute impressions that adults can make on the hearts and minds of children. In language that is both spare and potently sincere, Chorão has created a character in Bruiser that we won't soon forget.