Fay: A Novel

Like Larry Brown? Love his work? Treat yourself to this great novel. You can't go wrong and you will want to read it many times.

Loved the book but did not like the ending. Guess I wanted more finality with Fay and her future, but just felt like I was left hanging. Maybe there will be a sequel and I can get resolution? Author did a great job putting you right in the middle of the story.

Catches you early with a strong start. Sputters. Then seems to idle-down into a slow haul until something outrageous happens. Then the pace and writing picks up, sputters, and idles down again. And the cycle repeats. And then again. And again. Finally things get so twisted and messed up that the author throws together a final melee and wraps things up. Close the book, pick up another.This fast and slow pace describes both the rhythms of the plot and of the characters running across the pages of this rather bleak, but well-told story. But even with some dreary downtime, you will be amazed at what can happen in one week. Runaways, pedophiles, and rapists murder and rape each other while drinking, stripping, and slutting through the seemingly ubiquitous bars and trailer parks of southern Mississippi. Then to give a nice context for all of this wholesome fun, fate turns against the troubled protagonists by tossing in nasty car wrecks and a gasoline tanker explosion. What will you do? People are born to die and it simply isn't a good idea to be within 100 miles of these folks if you want to steer clear of that fact.All the beer drinking, bad behavior, and stupid choices filling the pages of this book might make you turn against the characters involved -- or bore you -- but you don't really end up hating anyone or getting all that bored. That, I think, is a good sign; a sign that the story is well-told, perhaps. But ever-present beer drinking, bad behavior, and stupid choices still becomes monotonous, detatching us from the lives we're reading about. It's almost other-worldly, as in, where are the people I know? I suppose that could be the point. A bit of overkill (literally and otherwise), but it does work to bury most people into a side of life that's down the road, on the outskirts of town; a reality, that if we had to experience it, we might want to cast aside as a surreality.Oh, yeah, Fay. Our lead character. Well, the novel really is less about her than it is about what she roams through. The story and its menagerie literally uses and rides Fay from one seedy scene to the next. Eventually it comes to an end, but without any real resolution, confirming what the book has been about from page one: A world without Good and Evil. In a general everyday sense, I think we need use a sense of Good and Evil to identify and attach to literary characters, perhaps as we probably do in non-literary life, but this novel doesn't obligate us to that chore. There is no sense of justice, no judgmental resolution, and closing those loose ends just wouldn't be any fun. A sequel would ruin everything.

If you read the novel Joe by Larry Brown you know that Gary Jones had two sisters and the older of the two of them left. Living in what can only be described as the most horrific conditions imaginable, she just got up and walked away. Walked away from her family and from the story. Joe was about Gary Jones and Joe Ransom, so the girl's story was left untold. The reader was left wondering about this glaring loose thread. What happened to the girl? She was just gone.Fay, also by Larry Brown, tells the story of that girl, and what an amazing story it is. Picture a beautiful, innocent, uneducated girl with no experience in the world that normal people live in just walking down the dusty country roads of rural Mississippi with only a couple of dollars to her name and completely unaware of the dangers lurking in the shadows. That is where the story of Fay begins.This being a Larry Brown novel you know that you are in store for a long, unrelenting dose of noir. Things just aren't going to go well. And by the time all the pieces are in place, you find yourself caring more for these characters than you thought you would.I'm not going to give away the plot. Just know that it's a joy to read. I'll turn back to this one in the future. By far my favorite by Larry Brown.

Larry Brown, as is always the case with this author, will grab you by the seat of your pants from start to finish and you won't want him to let go. Yes, it is a long book, maybe a bit too lengthy, but it is hard to put down and Brown insists on getting his point across...which is make his fictional characters seem real in a life that is made up mainly of drinking, smoking, cruising around and sex, and then more of the same. Could it be any different with the characters that populate his writing? That is a question that readers will try to answer throughout the book. If you are into moralism, don't bother with this novel...Brown doesn't want your opinion - he wants to tell it like it was in Mississippi (and many other places in the '70s-'80s, and not with much has changed in today's world) and he does so. Will the reader sympathize with Fay and the other figures (men & women left in her wake) in his story? I again don't think Larry Brown would give a hoot, but he will leave you thinking about the America we live in, like it or not.

This is gritty and real. Fay will stay with you long after you finish this book. The author, who is a sad loss to literature, tells a tale of empathy and inequality through a child/woman who has grown up the hard way with little knowledge of the wider world but who learns fast - very fast. The story is peppered with characters it's difficult not to feel for. This is a page turner in the tradition of Faulkner and McCarthy. I can offer no higher praise.