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FAY.
Fay by Larry Brown. Charles Scribners & Sons ,2000
556 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
155 people are currently reading
2868 people want to read
About the author
Larry Brown
73 books653 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Larry Brown was an American writer who was born and lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Brown wrote fiction and nonfiction. He graduated from high school in Oxford but did not go to college. Many years later, he took a creative writing class from the Mississippi novelist Ellen Douglas. Brown served in the United States Marine Corps from 1970 to 1972. On his return to Oxford, he worked at a small stove company before joining the city fire department. An avid reader, Brown began writing in his spare time while he worked as a firefighter in Oxford in 1980.
Brown was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction. Brown was the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction, which he won in 1992 for his novel, Joe and again in 1997 for his novel Father and Son. In 1998, he received a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, which granted him $35,000 per year for three years to write. In 2000, the State of Mississippi granted him a Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts. For one semester, Brown taught as a writer-in-residence in the creative writing program at the University of Mississippi, temporarily taking over the position held by his friend Barry Hannah. He later served as visiting writer at the University of Montana in Missoula. He taught briefly at other colleges throughout the United States.
Brown died of an apparent heart attack at his home in the Yocona community, near Oxford, in November 2004.
Larry Brown was an American writer who was born and lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Brown wrote fiction and nonfiction. He graduated from high school in Oxford but did not go to college. Many years later, he took a creative writing class from the Mississippi novelist Ellen Douglas. Brown served in the United States Marine Corps from 1970 to 1972. On his return to Oxford, he worked at a small stove company before joining the city fire department. An avid reader, Brown began writing in his spare time while he worked as a firefighter in Oxford in 1980.
Brown was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction. Brown was the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction, which he won in 1992 for his novel, Joe and again in 1997 for his novel Father and Son. In 1998, he received a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, which granted him $35,000 per year for three years to write. In 2000, the State of Mississippi granted him a Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts. For one semester, Brown taught as a writer-in-residence in the creative writing program at the University of Mississippi, temporarily taking over the position held by his friend Barry Hannah. He later served as visiting writer at the University of Montana in Missoula. He taught briefly at other colleges throughout the United States.
Brown died of an apparent heart attack at his home in the Yocona community, near Oxford, in November 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 331 reviews
May 20, 2017
Lot's of reviews going around comparing Larry Brown with William Faulkner.
If you've never read any of William Faulkner's books then know that Larry Brown's writing is just like Faulkner's.
If you have read some of Faulkner's books then let me just go ahead and say I lied in my first comment... but there are similarities in these two fellows.
Both gentlemen were born in the same area of Mississippi, both died in Mississippi.
Faulkner 1897 to 1962.
Brown 1951 to 2004.
Neither of these men obtained a college degree.
Both men pursued descriptive writing.
Both wrote about the southern people of the United States. Mostly the poor southern people, flawed, downtrodden, everyman protagonists.
And they both knew these people incredibly well.
They lived with them.
Fay is a very good looking 17 year old runaway. She had good reason to run away but no plan other than to head south.
Fay has two dollars.
She learns that she likes the taste of beer and enjoys making love.
She learns how to fry chicken and how to shoot a gun....... (((BANG)))
If you've never read any of William Faulkner's books then know that Larry Brown's writing is just like Faulkner's.
If you have read some of Faulkner's books then let me just go ahead and say I lied in my first comment... but there are similarities in these two fellows.
Both gentlemen were born in the same area of Mississippi, both died in Mississippi.
Faulkner 1897 to 1962.
Brown 1951 to 2004.
Neither of these men obtained a college degree.
Both men pursued descriptive writing.
Both wrote about the southern people of the United States. Mostly the poor southern people, flawed, downtrodden, everyman protagonists.
And they both knew these people incredibly well.
They lived with them.
Fay is a very good looking 17 year old runaway. She had good reason to run away but no plan other than to head south.
Fay has two dollars.
She learns that she likes the taste of beer and enjoys making love.
She learns how to fry chicken and how to shoot a gun....... (((BANG)))
May 16, 2018
She probably isn’t SINless, lacking a Single Identification Number (SIN), but Fay reminded me of William Gibson’s Mona. Of course, I believe this is Mississippi grit-lit.
I think these quotes point out a lot of her trouble. Plus, being young, clueless, homeless, destitute and attractive.
“All this trouble over a little blood rising up in an organ, and glance, and looks, and thoughts of the joining of flesh.”
“For just a moment before she opened it she thought about what she was doing and wondered what was in the bags. Then she went ahead and put the key into the lock and turned it and turned the handle. The bags were close to her hand.”
I think these quotes point out a lot of her trouble. Plus, being young, clueless, homeless, destitute and attractive.
“All this trouble over a little blood rising up in an organ, and glance, and looks, and thoughts of the joining of flesh.”
“For just a moment before she opened it she thought about what she was doing and wondered what was in the bags. Then she went ahead and put the key into the lock and turned it and turned the handle. The bags were close to her hand.”
March 2, 2024
“She came down out of the hills that were growing black with night, and in the dusty road her feet found small broken stones that made her wince. Alone for the first time in the world and full dark coming quickly.”
Seventeen years old and striking out on her own. Fay Jones. She’s not running away for foolish reasons. No one took away her cell phone. She doesn’t have an unfair curfew. What she does have, however, is a low-down, sonofabitch drunk for a father, a mother that doesn’t stand up for her children, and an empty belly most of the time. Can’t say I blame her for grabbing her purse and hitting the road without warning. I first met Fay back in 2020 when I read the book titled Joe by Larry Brown. What a book! This one? Well, let me explain.
I was completely engrossed from the first page. Until… I wasn’t. I thought about setting it aside a few times. But then I absolutely had to find out Fay’s fate. What was the problem, you ask? Well, it was a bit too repetitive and detailed for this reader. And that’s coming from one who usually digs all the details. Yet, this one went a bit too far. Apparently, I’m not a fan of excruciating details. It pulls me out of a story, distracting me from the main point. Let me show you what I mean.
“She made coffee and looked through some drawers for some more cigarettes but couldn’t find any… She sat down and waited for the coffee. When it was ready she poured a cup and put sugar in it and milk from the icebox and looked at some cold pastries in there but decided against them. When she had the coffee in front of her and it had cooled down a little she lit her last cigarette and smoked it while she drank the coffee. It went too quick. She stood up and drank the rest of the coffee and turned the pot off. “Well, shit,” she said.”
Well, shit, indeed. There’s a lot more of this stuff throughout this nearly 500 page book. Each time a purse was opened, ciggies pulled out and lit, I read about it. Every time a can of beer was cracked open, that information was relayed to me. As if any of this had to do with moving the plot forward. Rather, it stalled the plot. I’ve got nothing against characters smoking or drinking excessively. In fact, I gobbled this stuff straight, along with the violence, in Brown’s book, Joe. But I need a point before you lose me.
I was going to tell you a bit more about this novel, but I’ve decided against it. I’ve spent enough time with it and I’m cranky now. I’ll just say this. Fay meets several losers along the way. There’s perhaps one upstanding guy along the way, but he’s two and half times Fay’s age. Make of that what you will. When I was seventeen years old at the start of college, the guys gave me my own special nickname. Read some of the positive reviews instead. If you want to read a moving piece of writing and excellent prose by this author, read Joe or Dirty Work instead. Decide for yourself after that if you want to read this. Don’t listen to me.
“All this trouble over a little blood rising up in an organ, and glances, and looks, and thoughts of the joining of flesh.”
Seventeen years old and striking out on her own. Fay Jones. She’s not running away for foolish reasons. No one took away her cell phone. She doesn’t have an unfair curfew. What she does have, however, is a low-down, sonofabitch drunk for a father, a mother that doesn’t stand up for her children, and an empty belly most of the time. Can’t say I blame her for grabbing her purse and hitting the road without warning. I first met Fay back in 2020 when I read the book titled Joe by Larry Brown. What a book! This one? Well, let me explain.
I was completely engrossed from the first page. Until… I wasn’t. I thought about setting it aside a few times. But then I absolutely had to find out Fay’s fate. What was the problem, you ask? Well, it was a bit too repetitive and detailed for this reader. And that’s coming from one who usually digs all the details. Yet, this one went a bit too far. Apparently, I’m not a fan of excruciating details. It pulls me out of a story, distracting me from the main point. Let me show you what I mean.
“She made coffee and looked through some drawers for some more cigarettes but couldn’t find any… She sat down and waited for the coffee. When it was ready she poured a cup and put sugar in it and milk from the icebox and looked at some cold pastries in there but decided against them. When she had the coffee in front of her and it had cooled down a little she lit her last cigarette and smoked it while she drank the coffee. It went too quick. She stood up and drank the rest of the coffee and turned the pot off. “Well, shit,” she said.”
Well, shit, indeed. There’s a lot more of this stuff throughout this nearly 500 page book. Each time a purse was opened, ciggies pulled out and lit, I read about it. Every time a can of beer was cracked open, that information was relayed to me. As if any of this had to do with moving the plot forward. Rather, it stalled the plot. I’ve got nothing against characters smoking or drinking excessively. In fact, I gobbled this stuff straight, along with the violence, in Brown’s book, Joe. But I need a point before you lose me.
I was going to tell you a bit more about this novel, but I’ve decided against it. I’ve spent enough time with it and I’m cranky now. I’ll just say this. Fay meets several losers along the way. There’s perhaps one upstanding guy along the way, but he’s two and half times Fay’s age. Make of that what you will. When I was seventeen years old at the start of college, the guys gave me my own special nickname. Read some of the positive reviews instead. If you want to read a moving piece of writing and excellent prose by this author, read Joe or Dirty Work instead. Decide for yourself after that if you want to read this. Don’t listen to me.
“All this trouble over a little blood rising up in an organ, and glances, and looks, and thoughts of the joining of flesh.”
March 1, 2022
Fay Jones. She's one of a kind. Do not sell her short. Her upbringing leaves much to be desired, her father is utter scum. When her home situation becomes untenable, she stuffs a scant few necessities in her purse and walks out. With no schooling past the fifth grade, she is going to be tackling her new life at an extreme disadvantage. At only 17, she is naive and ignorant, in that she has never had the opportunity to be exposed to things of the world outside the shack she is just leaving. She is whip smart and aiming for a better life. She means to go to Biloxi and woe be it to anyone who tries to thwart her.
Loved the character of Fay, and loathed plenty of others. This is pure Southern Gothic. Dark and excellent.
Loved the character of Fay, and loathed plenty of others. This is pure Southern Gothic. Dark and excellent.
November 29, 2014
Fay:Larry Brown's Look at Love in All the Wrong Places
Fay was chosen by members of On the Southern Literary Trail as a group read for November, 2014.
Larry Brown, July 9, 1951 – November 24, 2004, Oxford, Mississippi
Fay, First Ed., Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2000
I have one of those first editions of Fay. But it's not signed. I kept meaning to get over to Oxford, Mississippi, to meet Larry Brown. Actually, I had several first editions by the time Fay came out. I figured I had plenty of time. After all, Brown was a young man. So was I. I was stunned when he died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three.
It was a wake up call of sorts. I was one year behind Brown. I was fifty-two when he checked out. I was still walking the court room floors as if I owned them, trying the hard cases, burning the candle at both ends. While I noted as did Edna St. Vincent Millay that blazing candle indeed made a lovely light, I was also conscious of the fact that all candles eventually burn out.
With Larry Brown's death I began to make an effort not to find an excuse to skip a book signing. And now I'm sixty-two. My health could be better. I joke about my key to immortality being a stack of unfinished books. Wouldn't it be pretty to think so.
With Larry Brown, I'll have to be content with the writing he left us. The interviews he gave. A wonderful documentary, The Rough South of Larry Brown. I think I would have liked Larry Brown, sitting down and talking with him. He understood people, brought them alive on the page, the good ones and the bad ones. That is so evident in Fay.
Fay came out of the hills north of Oxford, Mississippi, raised poor. She grew up hard, with a Daddy who led her mother and her other siblings from place to place. She's followed the migrant workers. Lost one brother to death. One was so sick Daddy traded him for a car. There's got to be a better life. Fay's heard there's a beach down on the coast. When Daddy expressed an interest in her no Daddy ought to have it's time to start walking. With two dollars stuffed in her bra, her pack of cigarettes in a purse slung over her shoulder, Fay is looking for that better life.
She's a natural beauty with a body that makes men turn and stare. That first night trudging down the road, some boys in a pickup offer her a ride. They seem nice enough. They have beer and they're going to fry catfish. Well, of course, one or more of them's got designs on Fay, but with all the booze, the dope, and an obliging woman on the premises, Fay makes it through the night in a maidenly way, but gets an eyeful of the obliging older woman satisfying two young men at the same time. Fay feels a shudder somewhere deep inside, never knowing that something like that was possible.
It's time to keep on walking. Fay meets Sam, a State Trooper, who takes her home with him. Sam lives in a cabin with his wife Amy. It's a loveless marriage. A lot of marriages don't survive the loss of a child. Sam and Amy lost their daughter Karen four years before, killed in a car wreck. Sam had the misfortune to be dispatched to work that wreck, found his daughter dead in a crumpled car, not a mark on her, but with a broken neck. That's hard on a man. It's hard on Amy who has become an alcoholic.
Fay becomes their second daughter. She's seventeen. Amy buys her clothes. Fay lives in Karen's room. Sam loves to take her fishing. Fay's good at it. "I wish I had a Daddy like you," Fay tells him.
But this fairy tale can't last. Amy is killed in a wreck. Soon after the funeral Fay and Sam become lovers. Bottom line, Fay is a natural at sex. And she enjoys it. Sam is bothered at their age difference, but, DAMN, he can't stop. If only he had the presence of mind to have worn a rubber that first time. But no.
Now, Sam and Fay being a couple upsets Alesandra, the beautiful woman Sam was having an affair with before Fay came into the picture. Alesandra has a temper. Alesandra also has a gun. While Sam is away, Alesandra is going to kill Fay. Fay kills Alesandra in self defense and leaves Sam's home, which leaves Sam in a lot of trouble with law enforcement.
And Sam has a bad case of the lovesick blues.
Hitching rides with truck drivers, Fay ends up in Biloxi, that beach at the coast. She finds herself at a dive called the Love Cage, a strip club where she meets Aaron Forrest the bouncer. She also meets Reena, a down on her luck stripper, who offers her a place to stay. Of course, Fay will end up with Aaron who starts out as a caring and protective man. The Love Cage covers up a lot of ugly secrets. Drugs. Prostitution. Pornography. Aaron is in the thick of all of it. He wants to keep Fay away from the business, out of Biloxi, over at his mother's place in Pass Christian.
Fay is a natural at sex. Oh. Had I already mentioned that? Aaron has it bad. Aaron has a jealous streak. If Fay were to leave him, Aaron would have a bad case of the lovesick blues.
Fay misses Sam. Things are going to get very complicated.
Larry Brown puts the reader through the ringer. This is an outstanding read. The dialogue crackles. The sense of place is so strong you can smell the pines of Northern Mississippi, and the salty breeze of the Gulf. Brown's scenes of violence explode, leaving the reader shuddering and the victims whimpering. This is a country noir thriller with overtones of ironic black comedy. Why not five stars? At five hundred pages, as magic as some of the prose was, the story didn't merit quite the length of the telling. A SOLID 4 STAR READ. Highly recommended.
EXTRAS!
An excerpt from The Rough South of Larry Brown
Another excerpt from The Rough South of Larry Brown
Just One More Visit With Larry Brown, Oxford American, June, 2013
SOUNDTRACK
Lovesick Blues, Hank Williams
Crazy, Patsy Cline
What'd I Say?, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley
Walking After Midnight, Patsy Cline
It's Only Make Believe, Conway Twitty
Fay was chosen by members of On the Southern Literary Trail as a group read for November, 2014.
Larry Brown, July 9, 1951 – November 24, 2004, Oxford, Mississippi
Fay, First Ed., Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2000
I have one of those first editions of Fay. But it's not signed. I kept meaning to get over to Oxford, Mississippi, to meet Larry Brown. Actually, I had several first editions by the time Fay came out. I figured I had plenty of time. After all, Brown was a young man. So was I. I was stunned when he died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three.
It was a wake up call of sorts. I was one year behind Brown. I was fifty-two when he checked out. I was still walking the court room floors as if I owned them, trying the hard cases, burning the candle at both ends. While I noted as did Edna St. Vincent Millay that blazing candle indeed made a lovely light, I was also conscious of the fact that all candles eventually burn out.
With Larry Brown's death I began to make an effort not to find an excuse to skip a book signing. And now I'm sixty-two. My health could be better. I joke about my key to immortality being a stack of unfinished books. Wouldn't it be pretty to think so.
With Larry Brown, I'll have to be content with the writing he left us. The interviews he gave. A wonderful documentary, The Rough South of Larry Brown. I think I would have liked Larry Brown, sitting down and talking with him. He understood people, brought them alive on the page, the good ones and the bad ones. That is so evident in Fay.
I got a feelin' called the blues, oh Lord
Since my baby said goodbye
Lord I don't know what I'll do
All I do is sit and sigh, oh Lord
That last long day she said goodbye
Well lord I thought I would cry
She'll do me, she'll do you
She's got that kind of lovin'
Lord I love to hear her when she calls me sweet da-a-addy
Such a beautiful dream
I hate to think it's all over
I've lost my heart it seems
I've grown so used to you somehow
Well I'm nobody's sugar daddy now
And I'm lo-o-onesome
I got the lovesick blues
-- Cliff Friend and Irving Mills(1922)
Fay came out of the hills north of Oxford, Mississippi, raised poor. She grew up hard, with a Daddy who led her mother and her other siblings from place to place. She's followed the migrant workers. Lost one brother to death. One was so sick Daddy traded him for a car. There's got to be a better life. Fay's heard there's a beach down on the coast. When Daddy expressed an interest in her no Daddy ought to have it's time to start walking. With two dollars stuffed in her bra, her pack of cigarettes in a purse slung over her shoulder, Fay is looking for that better life.
She's a natural beauty with a body that makes men turn and stare. That first night trudging down the road, some boys in a pickup offer her a ride. They seem nice enough. They have beer and they're going to fry catfish. Well, of course, one or more of them's got designs on Fay, but with all the booze, the dope, and an obliging woman on the premises, Fay makes it through the night in a maidenly way, but gets an eyeful of the obliging older woman satisfying two young men at the same time. Fay feels a shudder somewhere deep inside, never knowing that something like that was possible.
It's time to keep on walking. Fay meets Sam, a State Trooper, who takes her home with him. Sam lives in a cabin with his wife Amy. It's a loveless marriage. A lot of marriages don't survive the loss of a child. Sam and Amy lost their daughter Karen four years before, killed in a car wreck. Sam had the misfortune to be dispatched to work that wreck, found his daughter dead in a crumpled car, not a mark on her, but with a broken neck. That's hard on a man. It's hard on Amy who has become an alcoholic.
Fay becomes their second daughter. She's seventeen. Amy buys her clothes. Fay lives in Karen's room. Sam loves to take her fishing. Fay's good at it. "I wish I had a Daddy like you," Fay tells him.
But this fairy tale can't last. Amy is killed in a wreck. Soon after the funeral Fay and Sam become lovers. Bottom line, Fay is a natural at sex. And she enjoys it. Sam is bothered at their age difference, but, DAMN, he can't stop. If only he had the presence of mind to have worn a rubber that first time. But no.
Now, Sam and Fay being a couple upsets Alesandra, the beautiful woman Sam was having an affair with before Fay came into the picture. Alesandra has a temper. Alesandra also has a gun. While Sam is away, Alesandra is going to kill Fay. Fay kills Alesandra in self defense and leaves Sam's home, which leaves Sam in a lot of trouble with law enforcement.
And Sam has a bad case of the lovesick blues.
Hitching rides with truck drivers, Fay ends up in Biloxi, that beach at the coast. She finds herself at a dive called the Love Cage, a strip club where she meets Aaron Forrest the bouncer. She also meets Reena, a down on her luck stripper, who offers her a place to stay. Of course, Fay will end up with Aaron who starts out as a caring and protective man. The Love Cage covers up a lot of ugly secrets. Drugs. Prostitution. Pornography. Aaron is in the thick of all of it. He wants to keep Fay away from the business, out of Biloxi, over at his mother's place in Pass Christian.
Fay is a natural at sex. Oh. Had I already mentioned that? Aaron has it bad. Aaron has a jealous streak. If Fay were to leave him, Aaron would have a bad case of the lovesick blues.
Fay misses Sam. Things are going to get very complicated.
Larry Brown puts the reader through the ringer. This is an outstanding read. The dialogue crackles. The sense of place is so strong you can smell the pines of Northern Mississippi, and the salty breeze of the Gulf. Brown's scenes of violence explode, leaving the reader shuddering and the victims whimpering. This is a country noir thriller with overtones of ironic black comedy. Why not five stars? At five hundred pages, as magic as some of the prose was, the story didn't merit quite the length of the telling. A SOLID 4 STAR READ. Highly recommended.
EXTRAS!
An excerpt from The Rough South of Larry Brown
Another excerpt from The Rough South of Larry Brown
Just One More Visit With Larry Brown, Oxford American, June, 2013
SOUNDTRACK
Lovesick Blues, Hank Williams
Crazy, Patsy Cline
What'd I Say?, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley
Walking After Midnight, Patsy Cline
It's Only Make Believe, Conway Twitty
January 30, 2024
Hear that lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
Readers were introduced to Fay Jones in Larry Brown's novel Joe(1991). Half-way through the story Fay walked away from a tragically dysfunctional family headed by a drunken, abusive father, so depraved that he traded his youngest son for a car. Twice in recent days he had come to Fay in the night ripping and tearing at her clothes and she was barely able to fight him off.
It wasn't going to happen again.
And she disappears from the story.
She reappears in the opening paragraphs of Fay (2000), having just walked away from her family:
I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry.
She heads south from northern Mississippi toward the Gulf Coast to a place that she had heard about somewhere: Biloxi. But a lot will happen in her life before she reaches her destination – and even more afterwards.
At seventeen-years old, Fay is both beautiful and intelligent, but because of the way that her family had lived and the fact that she was forced to drop out of school after the fifth grade, she is naive when it comes to dealing with people – especially difficult people.
She is so ignorant of the real world that she has no knowledge of such things as seat belts, pay phones, movies, television. History is a closed book to her so much so that despite growing up in the Deep South she doesn’t even know that there was a Civil War. She also has no idea how far she will have to travel in order to reach Biloxi.
She had a lot to learn and as Mike Shea wrote in the Austin Chronicle, “of all the lessons she would learn, the very first would prove most enduring: Fay learned that her face and figure had the power to freeze men in their tracks and that this could more than compensate for her naiveté and lack of sophistication. With no other resources at her disposal, her wiles and manipulations became the key to her survival …. With no other force to guide her, Fay's drifting life becomes defined by the men who engage her attentions -- some physically, some romantically, some accidentally. Too soon, she discovers that good men have a bad side and that bad men have a worse side."
Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves began to die?
That means he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
Larry Brown died all too soon at age fifty-three. Here is what I wrote about him in my review of his final book, A Miracle of Catfish (2007)
The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
Songwriter: Hank Williams Sr.
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
Readers were introduced to Fay Jones in Larry Brown's novel Joe(1991). Half-way through the story Fay walked away from a tragically dysfunctional family headed by a drunken, abusive father, so depraved that he traded his youngest son for a car. Twice in recent days he had come to Fay in the night ripping and tearing at her clothes and she was barely able to fight him off.
It wasn't going to happen again.
She stood up. She slipped her feet into her shoes and she picked up her purse and she looked around the room. She had the clothes she was wearing, a skirt stuffed into the purse, and that was all she had. She looked at her little sister once. She was curled in the corner, talking silently to the sick baby.
’I’m gone,’ she said.
And she disappears from the story.
She reappears in the opening paragraphs of Fay (2000), having just walked away from her family:
She came down out of the hills that were growing black with night, and in the dusty road her feet found small broken stones that made her wince. Alone for the first time in the world and full dark coming quickly….
More than once she stopped and looked back up into the ridges that stood behind her, thinking things over, but each time she shook her head and went on.
I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry.
She heads south from northern Mississippi toward the Gulf Coast to a place that she had heard about somewhere: Biloxi. But a lot will happen in her life before she reaches her destination – and even more afterwards.
At seventeen-years old, Fay is both beautiful and intelligent, but because of the way that her family had lived and the fact that she was forced to drop out of school after the fifth grade, she is naive when it comes to dealing with people – especially difficult people.
She is so ignorant of the real world that she has no knowledge of such things as seat belts, pay phones, movies, television. History is a closed book to her so much so that despite growing up in the Deep South she doesn’t even know that there was a Civil War. She also has no idea how far she will have to travel in order to reach Biloxi.
She had a lot to learn and as Mike Shea wrote in the Austin Chronicle, “of all the lessons she would learn, the very first would prove most enduring: Fay learned that her face and figure had the power to freeze men in their tracks and that this could more than compensate for her naiveté and lack of sophistication. With no other resources at her disposal, her wiles and manipulations became the key to her survival …. With no other force to guide her, Fay's drifting life becomes defined by the men who engage her attentions -- some physically, some romantically, some accidentally. Too soon, she discovers that good men have a bad side and that bad men have a worse side."
Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves began to die?
That means he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
Larry Brown died all too soon at age fifty-three. Here is what I wrote about him in my review of his final book, A Miracle of Catfish (2007)
Larry Brown wrote about his northern Mississippi home land, which is the same geographic area that William Faulkner wrote about. Not only was Brown’s literary territory Faulknerian, so were his characters – mostly hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-loving, hard-luck losers, whose hard-luck is mostly the result of bad choices and bad decisions.
But Brown was his own man. His voice was not that of the great man. I always had the feeling that Faulkner was a detached observer who viewed his characters and their foibles from afar. He seemed to look down his aristocratic nose at them and there was no possibility that he would ever associate with them on a social level.
Brown, on the other hand, was anything but detached. He was riding down the back roads in the pick-up with his characters, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and cursing the circumstances that had made them the losers they were, while not recognizing the role they themselves played in creating the situations they found themselves in. Brown knew these people intimately, I believe, because he was once one of them.
The two writers differ in another way. Faulkner was overly generous with his words (but not with his periods). Brown was an economical writer who was stingy with his words (but not with his periods). So while they wrote about the same region and the same people, they did so in a different fashion.
The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
Songwriter: Hank Williams Sr.
March 8, 2016
It's a shame Brown died, because I felt this to be his best book, and one that screamed for a sequel. Given that Fay itself was a sequel of sorts, I think this was a very real possibility. Fay Jones comes from about as far down the social ladder as you can get (I hate the term "white trash," so I'll just leave it at that), so when her "family" falls apart, she departs on her own, in a way that definitely reminds you of Lena Grove from Light in August. But Fay's a different kind of gal, and her departure, unlike Lena's, is a nighttime journey. Yeah, she's vulnerable, seemingly innocent -- but if pushed, she shows herself a survivor who can take care of herself. To my mind, Fay is (or evolves into) one of the great femme fatale characters in all of noir literature, but there's nothing darkly romantic here. These are real people living out hard lives. Fay is a part of that world, but she moves through it like a ship of doom. Many of these characters (a cheating cop, a bar bouncer, an alcoholic wife, a jealous lover, a rapist) are already damned, Fay just provides the final focus. I hope the Coen brothers pick this novel up as a future project, because it's a killer.
November 1, 2014
I knew I was going to love Fay right from the beginning when she's running away from her family and breaks into a church to escape from a menacing dog. She goes into the kitchen area, finds food in the refrigerator, has a nice meal, then puts everything back where she found it, washed her dishes, wiped off the table, and put a dollar in the collection plate. She's only 17, raised in the sticks, uneducated and naive, and very, very good-looking. But it would be a mistake to underestimate Fay; she can take care of herself, oh yes she can! It would also be a mistake to fall in love with Fay, as a couple of very tough men find out to their sorrow.
Larry Brown is the kind of writer that lets you taste every good, ice cold beer, lets you savor every puff of a cigarette, whether you smoke or not, gets you into the heart and soul of poor wretched characters just trying to get through the day or night. It is an incredible novel for all these reasons, but Fay is an unforgettable character. I am still reeling from the ending, I never saw it coming, and it happened so quickly I had to read it 3 times to believe it. Right on, Fay, right on!
Larry Brown is the kind of writer that lets you taste every good, ice cold beer, lets you savor every puff of a cigarette, whether you smoke or not, gets you into the heart and soul of poor wretched characters just trying to get through the day or night. It is an incredible novel for all these reasons, but Fay is an unforgettable character. I am still reeling from the ending, I never saw it coming, and it happened so quickly I had to read it 3 times to believe it. Right on, Fay, right on!
January 5, 2014
Well, damn. Larry Brown sure knows how to hunt a reader down when their eyes are trained on the fate of his characters.
I couldn’t read this fast enough and I regretted my haste from top to bottom, thankful though when he took time to coax us in with the smoke and the whiskey, taking in the sun on the deck with Amy.
I can see that other readers may be impatient with that settling-in thing he does, but he gears up quick enough and I began to run out of pages fast, chasing with Sam, trying to get ahead of it all somehow.
What I’m saying is: heart and hope get involved directly with these characters, all of them - Fay, Sam, Aaron and Reena. I lost count of all the black souls on that Larry Brown highway, but felt like they were carrying the good ones with them from Biloxi down to Pass Christian.
and tell me if Tom Waits Hold On isn’t about Fay?
If anyone has any ideas on how I can fall into a book next that is as good as this, please let me know, otherwise I might just get back to Dirty Work. If only the post man would hurry Joe along.
I couldn’t read this fast enough and I regretted my haste from top to bottom, thankful though when he took time to coax us in with the smoke and the whiskey, taking in the sun on the deck with Amy.
I can see that other readers may be impatient with that settling-in thing he does, but he gears up quick enough and I began to run out of pages fast, chasing with Sam, trying to get ahead of it all somehow.
What I’m saying is: heart and hope get involved directly with these characters, all of them - Fay, Sam, Aaron and Reena. I lost count of all the black souls on that Larry Brown highway, but felt like they were carrying the good ones with them from Biloxi down to Pass Christian.
and tell me if Tom Waits Hold On isn’t about Fay?
If anyone has any ideas on how I can fall into a book next that is as good as this, please let me know, otherwise I might just get back to Dirty Work. If only the post man would hurry Joe along.
October 19, 2022
Larry Brown looks at things square-on, drinks you under the table, kicks your ass and breaks your heart. Full of tenderness, without pity, he shows up a hard life for what it is: a little bit of good luck and a lot more bad luck, cold hard reality and largehearted hope, prayer for a miracle without a miracle in the end. What’s best though, even better than that, he gives you so much of the why and how of people, you can’t ever look at the what the same way again.
“Don’t say what you would or wouldn’t do, honey. Cause one day you might have to.”
I loved Sam most. And of course Fay, sweet Fay.
First read December 2011
- - -
November 2012:
I thought it was Jewel and Mary and Virgil of Father and Son who would stick with me so vividly this year, but no. It’s Sam and Fay. Brown wrote this himself when Fay wouldn’t let him alone, when he couldn’t stop thinking what happened to her after Joe. It shows. It bleeds right through the page, that affection-without-pity. Powerful and contagious.
And the second time through it’s even more tremendous, how simply and fully Sam and Fay are brought to real life. I dare you to even try to judge people the same way after this one. It’s one of the several contributors, why I barely have any tolerance left for the people in books who only say and do and think the right things and think that makes them good.
We sabotaged a whole factory of magic eight balls so they only tell the truth, was the Softer World strip the other day. We are all fucked, and we are all saved.
And like a hundred other things in the course of a week I thought, Fay.
“Don’t say what you would or wouldn’t do, honey. Cause one day you might have to.”
I loved Sam most. And of course Fay, sweet Fay.
First read December 2011
- - -
November 2012:
I thought it was Jewel and Mary and Virgil of Father and Son who would stick with me so vividly this year, but no. It’s Sam and Fay. Brown wrote this himself when Fay wouldn’t let him alone, when he couldn’t stop thinking what happened to her after Joe. It shows. It bleeds right through the page, that affection-without-pity. Powerful and contagious.
And the second time through it’s even more tremendous, how simply and fully Sam and Fay are brought to real life. I dare you to even try to judge people the same way after this one. It’s one of the several contributors, why I barely have any tolerance left for the people in books who only say and do and think the right things and think that makes them good.
We sabotaged a whole factory of magic eight balls so they only tell the truth, was the Softer World strip the other day. We are all fucked, and we are all saved.
And like a hundred other things in the course of a week I thought, Fay.
May 2, 2021
Difficult to rate this book as I'm not familiar with this kind of topic. The book is somewhere between 3-4 stars. While I had a similar feeling like when reading "Gun Love" by Jennifer Clement, I liked the atmosphere and writing style of this one more. Since both books are dealing with different topics, I understand it's not comparable but both are addressing sides of America which were very unknown to me. Sometimes so surreal that it felt more like a movie than anything else.
Fay was a fast-read. And everything felt wrong from beginning to end. I had to repeatedly remember myself that Fay is 17. All the men taking advantage of her (or in general women) were disgusting. Even though it was not as disturbing as "Lolita", it was still not a pleasant story. Poor young Fay who was just lonely and longing for love. I actually liked the ending of this book since it felt real. But I really don't know what to think about the "love story" between Fay and Sam.
Fay was a fast-read. And everything felt wrong from beginning to end. I had to repeatedly remember myself that Fay is 17. All the men taking advantage of her (or in general women) were disgusting. Even though it was not as disturbing as "Lolita", it was still not a pleasant story. Poor young Fay who was just lonely and longing for love. I actually liked the ending of this book since it felt real. But I really don't know what to think about the "love story" between Fay and Sam.
January 30, 2024
Well my daddy’s a drunk and my mama’s a frigging fruitcake and they live in a little rotten cabin up in the woods and the floor’s so dirty you can’t stand to walk on it barefooted. And you have to be careful inside because the wasps keep building nests. Anything else you want to know?
Fay Jones, seventeen and almost feral in her innocence of the ways of the world, decides to run away from her ‘home’ in the forest and from the unwanted attentions of her abusive father. She’s got a couple of scavenged dollars in her purse and a dream of somehow making her way to Biloxi, there to start anew her arrested development.
It might have been a good dog once, before it got into the trap. Maybe even somebody’s pet. But she’d been bitten too many times to feel safe around any dog now. Maybe later when she got settled somewhere she could get a puppy, learn how to be friends with a dog.
Fay, raised on a diet of gruesome child labour in the cotton fields, misery, hunger and hard fists from her father, has sunk as low as a civilized person can get. She can only get up from here. But what if the Biloxi of her dreams holds even more dangerous predators than the father and the beasts of the forest?
Fay sounds like the predestined victim of crooks and perverts of all colours along the way, an axiom amply illustrated by her first hitch hiking experience, when she barely escapes a gang rape.
Her second pickup car is a highway patrol cop, and here she strikes gold, because this man has empathy to spare and enough bitterness in his own home life (an alcoholic wife, a recently deceased child) to spare a kind thought for the innocent drifter on the highway.
Something like letting the ones with the hardest luck have one more break. If he could.
>>><<<>>><<<
The blurb sort of gives away the main point of the novel: Fay Jones, the innocent sexpot of the back woods, is the very epitome of the femme fatale in noir fiction. Her good intentions and her modest dreams serve only to underline the dramatic – we could as well admit it here : deadly – repercussions she has for the men who try to bed her and save her.
Larry Brown, with this second outing under his direction, is fast climbing the ladder of my noir preferences. The progress of Kay Jones across the state of Mississippi to the Gulf Coast has a powerful sense of the implacable (and doomed) destiny that to me is more important to the noir cannon that the crime itself. The grittiness of the setting, the storm clouds gathering on the horizon, are temporarily held at bay by interludes of domesticity and normality that Kay Jones experiences in the house of Sam the patrolman and later as the mistress of a strip club owner / drug dealer.
But the good people Fay meets are brought down by their own misguided passions, by character weakness or by that unforgiving Fate that governs the genre. The bad people she meets are charmed by her innocence, by her vulnerability, and they are doomed in their turn by failing to notice that Fay Jones is more than a drifter alone in a cruel world. She has a dream for herself, and for the child she eventually carries in her womb, a dream expressed by a Reena, a drug addict and victim of abuse that offers Fay brief shelter:
“I didn’t have shit when I grew up,” she said. “And I ain’t got nothing right now. I’m just trying to do better. I want my kids to have more than I did. It ain’t their fault that I’ve done the way I’ve done. You want another beer?”
Reena the strip joint dancer has already fallen beyond salvation point, but her example will serve Fay as an added incentive to escape the cards she was dealt at the start of her life, no matter how many dead bodies she leaves behind.
She was young and she was strong and nobody had ruined her yet.
This was an amazing character portrait that kept me guessing until the final page.
I will continue to explore the catalogue of Larry Brown with a keen sense of anticipation.
Fay Jones, seventeen and almost feral in her innocence of the ways of the world, decides to run away from her ‘home’ in the forest and from the unwanted attentions of her abusive father. She’s got a couple of scavenged dollars in her purse and a dream of somehow making her way to Biloxi, there to start anew her arrested development.
It might have been a good dog once, before it got into the trap. Maybe even somebody’s pet. But she’d been bitten too many times to feel safe around any dog now. Maybe later when she got settled somewhere she could get a puppy, learn how to be friends with a dog.
Fay, raised on a diet of gruesome child labour in the cotton fields, misery, hunger and hard fists from her father, has sunk as low as a civilized person can get. She can only get up from here. But what if the Biloxi of her dreams holds even more dangerous predators than the father and the beasts of the forest?
Fay sounds like the predestined victim of crooks and perverts of all colours along the way, an axiom amply illustrated by her first hitch hiking experience, when she barely escapes a gang rape.
Her second pickup car is a highway patrol cop, and here she strikes gold, because this man has empathy to spare and enough bitterness in his own home life (an alcoholic wife, a recently deceased child) to spare a kind thought for the innocent drifter on the highway.
Something like letting the ones with the hardest luck have one more break. If he could.
>>><<<>>><<<
The blurb sort of gives away the main point of the novel: Fay Jones, the innocent sexpot of the back woods, is the very epitome of the femme fatale in noir fiction. Her good intentions and her modest dreams serve only to underline the dramatic – we could as well admit it here : deadly – repercussions she has for the men who try to bed her and save her.
Larry Brown, with this second outing under his direction, is fast climbing the ladder of my noir preferences. The progress of Kay Jones across the state of Mississippi to the Gulf Coast has a powerful sense of the implacable (and doomed) destiny that to me is more important to the noir cannon that the crime itself. The grittiness of the setting, the storm clouds gathering on the horizon, are temporarily held at bay by interludes of domesticity and normality that Kay Jones experiences in the house of Sam the patrolman and later as the mistress of a strip club owner / drug dealer.
But the good people Fay meets are brought down by their own misguided passions, by character weakness or by that unforgiving Fate that governs the genre. The bad people she meets are charmed by her innocence, by her vulnerability, and they are doomed in their turn by failing to notice that Fay Jones is more than a drifter alone in a cruel world. She has a dream for herself, and for the child she eventually carries in her womb, a dream expressed by a Reena, a drug addict and victim of abuse that offers Fay brief shelter:
“I didn’t have shit when I grew up,” she said. “And I ain’t got nothing right now. I’m just trying to do better. I want my kids to have more than I did. It ain’t their fault that I’ve done the way I’ve done. You want another beer?”
Reena the strip joint dancer has already fallen beyond salvation point, but her example will serve Fay as an added incentive to escape the cards she was dealt at the start of her life, no matter how many dead bodies she leaves behind.
She was young and she was strong and nobody had ruined her yet.
This was an amazing character portrait that kept me guessing until the final page.
I will continue to explore the catalogue of Larry Brown with a keen sense of anticipation.
July 14, 2020
Ein wirklich beeindruckender und spannender Roman,den ich mur schlecht aus der Hand legen konnte auch wenn es eine komplett fremde Welt für mich war und ich oft Kopfschüttelnd da sahs. Die Tiefe der Protas hat mir etwas gefehlt und am Ende gab es auch ein paar Dinge, die mich gestört haben aber ich hab es wirklich gern in der tollen Leserunde gelesen.
February 5, 2017
WOW
Maybe I'll review it later but if you're not inclined to look for a novel by the too soon gone Larry Brown there's nothing I can say about his writing that would change your mind.
Stunning.
I'd like to add:
This is a Grit-Noir novel and a crime-suspense thriller but what makes it memorable is character development.
Each of the characters has his/her own, distinctive "voice".
The plot twists, the entanglements, the unexpected acts of violence that occur - all majestically rendered by a master novelist.
Five Stars.
November 4, 2014
All I know is that I couldn't put the book down. It's a good story, well written, exciting and suspenseful. Yeah the language is bad and there is lots of sex, but heck I really liked it A LOT.
Fay, poor Fay!
A word about Fay. I have been yelled at, in another review, for using the term "white trash". So tell me what other words can be used that so succinctly, so completely depict a group of people? OK, I will describe Fay as poor and uneducated, but that just brushes the surface of her ignorance. Her understanding of how the world works is at a completely other level than most people's. She doesn't know about tips or that liquor and cigarettes can only be bought if you are over 18. That is just two examples. I did wonder at times if such ignorance was possible. She went only through the fifth grade. This book shows you her world and it is worth reading just for that. To learn. To understand what such a life is like; not to accuse but to really understand. What are her alternatives? Does she even have any alternatives?
Eventually she learns about the real world. All I will say is that she survives. That is the only hint I will give about this story that concerns a police officer, 17 year-old Fay and a strip club bouncer in Mississippi in 1985. Love and survival are the themes.
Believe it or not, there is humor. Here is one example. She has learned one must tip. So she tips a taxi driver and he says, "You are a very kind lady, and a most scrumptious one!" I smiled.
There is so much beer consumed in this book it ought to be made into a movie to sell beer. That the characters didn't simply float away is amazing.
Beside the tension that builds, what hit me about the writing was the author's ability to describe body movements in such detail that you can read body language without seeing a picture. This is very effective. The emotions are there before your eyes through the body language described. It is like watching a movie rather than hearing a story.
The audiobook narration by Tom Stechschutte was perfect. No complaints. Each character, when they spoke, sounded just as they should sound.
*************************
My thoughts half-way through:
This is so sad. Do you hear me?
And life is so complicated. It is actually possible to "love" a person so terribly f*/ked up as Fay....even given what she does. My heart bleeds for Fay.
Fay, poor Fay!
A word about Fay. I have been yelled at, in another review, for using the term "white trash". So tell me what other words can be used that so succinctly, so completely depict a group of people? OK, I will describe Fay as poor and uneducated, but that just brushes the surface of her ignorance. Her understanding of how the world works is at a completely other level than most people's. She doesn't know about tips or that liquor and cigarettes can only be bought if you are over 18. That is just two examples. I did wonder at times if such ignorance was possible. She went only through the fifth grade. This book shows you her world and it is worth reading just for that. To learn. To understand what such a life is like; not to accuse but to really understand. What are her alternatives? Does she even have any alternatives?
Eventually she learns about the real world. All I will say is that she survives. That is the only hint I will give about this story that concerns a police officer, 17 year-old Fay and a strip club bouncer in Mississippi in 1985. Love and survival are the themes.
Believe it or not, there is humor. Here is one example. She has learned one must tip. So she tips a taxi driver and he says, "You are a very kind lady, and a most scrumptious one!" I smiled.
There is so much beer consumed in this book it ought to be made into a movie to sell beer. That the characters didn't simply float away is amazing.
Beside the tension that builds, what hit me about the writing was the author's ability to describe body movements in such detail that you can read body language without seeing a picture. This is very effective. The emotions are there before your eyes through the body language described. It is like watching a movie rather than hearing a story.
The audiobook narration by Tom Stechschutte was perfect. No complaints. Each character, when they spoke, sounded just as they should sound.
*************************
My thoughts half-way through:
This is so sad. Do you hear me?
And life is so complicated. It is actually possible to "love" a person so terribly f*/ked up as Fay....even given what she does. My heart bleeds for Fay.
January 27, 2019
I am a major fan of Cormac McCarthy, the master of Southern Gothic, and after discovering Kentucky's Chris Offutt, I decided that I finally needed to read Larry Brown, grit lit author extraordinaire from - wait for it! - Oxford, Mississippi, home of William Faulkner. In "Fay", a 17-year-old girl flees from her family, where she suffered neglect, abuse, and poverty, and decides to cross the state of Mississippi in order to get to the coastal town of Biloxi and make a new life for herself. At the start of her journey, Fay has two dollars and a pack of cigarettes to her name, so she has to rely on the kindness of strangers - and not all of them have pure intentions when they encounter a naive young girl who knows almost nothing about the world at the side of the road. But while Fay certainly lacks experience and an education, she is clever and resourceful, so there are quite some men who will soon find out that they are mistaken when they think they can take advantage of or dominate her. At the end, three men and one woman are dead.
Brown shines when he describes the rough reality of those who are generally referred to as "white trash": Young, poor women who were exploited and then abandoned; alcoholic mothers trapped in abusive relationships; bouncers and barkeepers in sleazy stripclubs; and again and again alcoholics as well as men and women who have stopped expecting anything from their lives. Although this book clearly isn't a comment on current politics (it was first published in 2010), I couldn't help but wonder whether many of these characters - living by a dog-eat-dog mentality, with no social security, no health care, no child services in sight and no mandatory schooling - would be part of Trump's infamous "base".
The fascinating center of the text is clearly Fay who tries to navigate a world that is unknown to her, and as the events that start to unfold during her journey slowly pick up speed, the text gets seriously addictive - this tome is a fast read. It also shows that Brown worked as a firefighter (one of the characters is a highway cop who is again and again called to gruesome accidents where people have died), and that he himself drank a lot and spent quite some time listening to guys hanging out in creepy bars - the characters in this novel feel unsettlingly real.
Kudos to Heyne for being the first publisher to put out a German translation of the book 17 years after its initial publication - I'm looking forward to reading more Larry Brown.
Brown shines when he describes the rough reality of those who are generally referred to as "white trash": Young, poor women who were exploited and then abandoned; alcoholic mothers trapped in abusive relationships; bouncers and barkeepers in sleazy stripclubs; and again and again alcoholics as well as men and women who have stopped expecting anything from their lives. Although this book clearly isn't a comment on current politics (it was first published in 2010), I couldn't help but wonder whether many of these characters - living by a dog-eat-dog mentality, with no social security, no health care, no child services in sight and no mandatory schooling - would be part of Trump's infamous "base".
The fascinating center of the text is clearly Fay who tries to navigate a world that is unknown to her, and as the events that start to unfold during her journey slowly pick up speed, the text gets seriously addictive - this tome is a fast read. It also shows that Brown worked as a firefighter (one of the characters is a highway cop who is again and again called to gruesome accidents where people have died), and that he himself drank a lot and spent quite some time listening to guys hanging out in creepy bars - the characters in this novel feel unsettlingly real.
Kudos to Heyne for being the first publisher to put out a German translation of the book 17 years after its initial publication - I'm looking forward to reading more Larry Brown.
September 15, 2021
I'm back again 3 months after my original review and added another star to make it five. I'm still thinking how clever this book was. 8/30/20
5/24/20 Larry Brown created quite a unique character in Fay. She was born poor in Mississippi and left home at 17 when her father began showing her unfatherly affection. All she had with her were the clothes on her back and a purse. She held onto that purse through the entire story. She decided to hitch hike to Biloxi and find a job. She was beautiful, an innocent, and had a heart of gold. It was a shame she had a tendency to wreak havoc everywhere she went. Especially with men.
I found one of Brown's writing techniques a bit bothersome - his descriptions of mundane events. Instead of writing, "She made coffee.", he wrote,
She put the coffee in the filter and put the little plastic thing that held it into the machine and then lifted the lid and poured in the water, put the pot under it and pushed the switch.
About halfway through the book is when I began to notice him doing the above. I began to look for examples. He did it a lot. And he mentioned that purse and cold beer a lot. It distracted me a bit but the story was so riveting I could overlook it. I almost gave this 4 stars.
5/24/20 Larry Brown created quite a unique character in Fay. She was born poor in Mississippi and left home at 17 when her father began showing her unfatherly affection. All she had with her were the clothes on her back and a purse. She held onto that purse through the entire story. She decided to hitch hike to Biloxi and find a job. She was beautiful, an innocent, and had a heart of gold. It was a shame she had a tendency to wreak havoc everywhere she went. Especially with men.
I found one of Brown's writing techniques a bit bothersome - his descriptions of mundane events. Instead of writing, "She made coffee.", he wrote,
She put the coffee in the filter and put the little plastic thing that held it into the machine and then lifted the lid and poured in the water, put the pot under it and pushed the switch.
About halfway through the book is when I began to notice him doing the above. I began to look for examples. He did it a lot. And he mentioned that purse and cold beer a lot. It distracted me a bit but the story was so riveting I could overlook it. I almost gave this 4 stars.
May 16, 2015
You could say about Fay that trouble followed her. You might note that above all else she is a survivor. She always has a good disposition and intends to do the right thing.* Most of the time I'm thinking about Fay, "oh well god bless her", and hoping all will go well. Finally as I near the very end I realize Larry Brown has written a damn good noire novel. All delivered in a nice slow southern pace, with so much lurking violence, sex, and brink of destruction tension that I felt inclined to greedily conclude it. It was the epilogue that I thought was the fitting and appropriate "noire" touch. Bravo Larry Brown! **No one can quite compare with Fay (the character),but there is a character very similar to Sam from this novel in Dirty White Boys by Stephen Hunter. State Trooper Bud Pewtie attempts to bring in three escaped convicts in a great fast paced thriller. Both are books I highly recommend.
June 17, 2017
Fay hat mich schlussendlich ziemlich beeindruckt. Es zeigt vor allem eine deprimierende, schmutzige Seite des Lebens, Abgründe, Schicksale und wie alles auch einfach mal den Bach runtergehen kann. Stellenweise hatte man ein paar nicht ganz passende, lange Monologe, die Längen hereingebracht haben und oft war man einfach nur schockiert. Es ist definitiv nichts, was man an einem Stück liest, weil man es erstmal verdauen muss. Aber je mehr man sich dem Ende nähert, desto mehr ergibt alles einen Sinn und das Finale war unheimlich gelungen. Besonders ist außerdem der Schreibstil und die Beschreibungen des Autors, alle Orte sind nämlich aus der Gegend um seine Heimat und es wirkt, als wäre man wirklich da, weil alles sehr lebhaft eingefangen wurde - wirklich bemerkenswert. Gute 4 Sterne von mir, ich würde definitiv wieder einen Brown lesen. Leider ist dies das erste Werk auf deutsch und der Autor früh gestorben, aber dann widme ich mich eventuell mal den Originalausgaben.
November 13, 2014
I have been having a little trouble recently with Grit Lit being too rough for my liking. So I was not sure I was ready to take on Fay from Larry Brown. But as I got into it, I initially found it very manageable in spite of some violence. I was reading it as a story of a girl whose story was a life of poverty. I found the glimpse into an impoverished life fascinating and reminiscent of some of my work with various social service (welfare) agencies in the south.
I was also interested by the general presentation of the male of the species as routinely sons of bitches and bastards, to coin a phrase. Damn. Women have it rough so much of the time. Makes me angry. So to find a teenage girl who takes a tire iron to a rapist is somehow gratifying.
And what does this teenage girl named Fay think about?
I am drawn by the story of poverty, but that is probably a stretch to say that is the big message from the book. Because there is much about drinking and drugging and sex and, I think, that gives poverty a really bad reputation. I think a story about poverty can include more about overcoming and succeeding. About being an amazing person in spite of the poverty. This book really focuses on the downside. It makes you glad that you had the good fortune not to find yourself impoverished. You laugh. You cringe. Who, after all, chooses to live in poverty?
In the final analysis, the book drags in too many places. There are some four star sections, for sure, but there is too much that is not essential to understanding the life and choices of Fay. I was distracted by the people (mostly men but some women too) she runs into. They are sad excuses for humanity for the most part. They pass their time doing little if anything of value. Fay spends her time realizing that fact but apparently unable to alter her course in relationship to them. We see both her potential and her failure to achieve that potential. It is frustrating to see Fay fall so short.
This is a three star book for me because in spite of the four star segments scattered throughout, there are regrettably plenty of two star sections that are barely tolerable, that I would edit out. Crass writing with dollops of brutal men and brutalized women fills too many of the pages.
The very short Epilogue suggests that Fay achieves what might be a higher level of sexualized life as an adult in New Orleans. But she has clearly not escaped her role as object and may not have even aspired beyond that status. Larry Brown does not display much concern for the people in his world or give much hope for their future.
I was also interested by the general presentation of the male of the species as routinely sons of bitches and bastards, to coin a phrase. Damn. Women have it rough so much of the time. Makes me angry. So to find a teenage girl who takes a tire iron to a rapist is somehow gratifying.
He was already inside her when she woke up. A dim bulb was burning in the ceiling over his head so that she saw first the top of his head thrusting against the backdrop of the light. At first she was scared and then she got mad. She tried to push him off but he threw a hard forearm like a steel bar againsther throat and when she tried to push him again he rammed her head back against the armrest and told her to be still, but she could not. He started panting in her ear. And in just a moment it was over for him. He turned his face up and strained against her and she said, “Why you chickenshit.” He lay there for only a moment and then he was coming off her even as she was going for his eyes with her fingernails. He slapped her and knocked her back. He reached for his shorts and underwear. The jack handle was sticking out from under her front seat and she reached and got it and caught him half-turning, a look of surprise coming onto his face, and the lick she gave him slammed his head against the brown pile carpet that lined the walls. Blood came out of his mouth and he spit out a tooth and tried to say something but she hit him again and then he was still, lying there naked curled on his side with one foot almost into the leg hole of his underwear and his tiny dick shrinking as she watched it, glistening, leaking.
And what does this teenage girl named Fay think about?
Shit, she couldn’t sit here all day. She had to start thinking about looking for a job. She never had asked for a job, didn’t know how to go about it, didn’t know the first thing about it. And what if they asked her a bunch of questions? There might be those forms to fill out. You might have to tell them all kinds of things, like where you were from, how old you were, all that shit, who’s your mother and daddy? Well my daddy’s a drunk and my mama’s a frigging fruitcake and they live in a little rotten cabin up in the woods and the floor’s so dirty you can’t stand to walk on it barefooted. And you have to be careful inside because the wasps keep building nests. Anything else you want to know?
I am drawn by the story of poverty, but that is probably a stretch to say that is the big message from the book. Because there is much about drinking and drugging and sex and, I think, that gives poverty a really bad reputation. I think a story about poverty can include more about overcoming and succeeding. About being an amazing person in spite of the poverty. This book really focuses on the downside. It makes you glad that you had the good fortune not to find yourself impoverished. You laugh. You cringe. Who, after all, chooses to live in poverty?
In the final analysis, the book drags in too many places. There are some four star sections, for sure, but there is too much that is not essential to understanding the life and choices of Fay. I was distracted by the people (mostly men but some women too) she runs into. They are sad excuses for humanity for the most part. They pass their time doing little if anything of value. Fay spends her time realizing that fact but apparently unable to alter her course in relationship to them. We see both her potential and her failure to achieve that potential. It is frustrating to see Fay fall so short.
This is a three star book for me because in spite of the four star segments scattered throughout, there are regrettably plenty of two star sections that are barely tolerable, that I would edit out. Crass writing with dollops of brutal men and brutalized women fills too many of the pages.
The very short Epilogue suggests that Fay achieves what might be a higher level of sexualized life as an adult in New Orleans. But she has clearly not escaped her role as object and may not have even aspired beyond that status. Larry Brown does not display much concern for the people in his world or give much hope for their future.
September 30, 2017
4 Stars. Very good.
Had good characters, a nice story pace that never stalled out, the writing quality was very good. The dialogue was often southern, rural sounding which seemed to take the setting back in time. It worked for me.
The story starts out with a seventeen year girl running away from home in the rural south of Mississippi. It turns out she was under abuse from her Dad, very few details as it is not really a significant part of the overall story. The story is more of an adventure of this young girl on her own as she travels along. There are two major parts of her adventure; One she is staying with a highway patrolman and his wife. The other is she staying with a strip club bouncer.
The highway patrolman seems to a have solid, well-off lifestyle. A respectable, well paying job. A beautiful wife. A house on the lake with a nice fishing boat that he takes out often. But all is not as it seems. They have lost a daughter and they are living a broken life. So when Fay arrives it is a welcomed addition to the dynamics inside the house. Tragic events happen and Fay is on the road again.
Her next stop is a strip club bouncer named Aaron. He is strong, has money, and wants her to work with his mom at a bed and breakfast he owns. Aaron at first provides a safe and comfortable spot for Fay. They go out to eat, take mini vacations, and enjoy themselves together. But Aaron has some dark sides like being a bit of a playboy, drug running, and a violent streak.
There was an adventurous feel to the story. A young person going out into the world with nothing and seeing what happens. I know she didn’t have much choice in the matter but she found herself in some interesting situations none the less. She found some people who were decent to her and she was decent to them (at times and not at other times). The writing style had a hint of Earnest Hemingway with detailed descriptions of enjoying food and drink. Struggles that test your internal fortitude and living under duress. For me, it was entertaining page turner.
Had good characters, a nice story pace that never stalled out, the writing quality was very good. The dialogue was often southern, rural sounding which seemed to take the setting back in time. It worked for me.
The story starts out with a seventeen year girl running away from home in the rural south of Mississippi. It turns out she was under abuse from her Dad, very few details as it is not really a significant part of the overall story. The story is more of an adventure of this young girl on her own as she travels along. There are two major parts of her adventure; One she is staying with a highway patrolman and his wife. The other is she staying with a strip club bouncer.
The highway patrolman seems to a have solid, well-off lifestyle. A respectable, well paying job. A beautiful wife. A house on the lake with a nice fishing boat that he takes out often. But all is not as it seems. They have lost a daughter and they are living a broken life. So when Fay arrives it is a welcomed addition to the dynamics inside the house. Tragic events happen and Fay is on the road again.
Her next stop is a strip club bouncer named Aaron. He is strong, has money, and wants her to work with his mom at a bed and breakfast he owns. Aaron at first provides a safe and comfortable spot for Fay. They go out to eat, take mini vacations, and enjoy themselves together. But Aaron has some dark sides like being a bit of a playboy, drug running, and a violent streak.
There was an adventurous feel to the story. A young person going out into the world with nothing and seeing what happens. I know she didn’t have much choice in the matter but she found herself in some interesting situations none the less. She found some people who were decent to her and she was decent to them (at times and not at other times). The writing style had a hint of Earnest Hemingway with detailed descriptions of enjoying food and drink. Struggles that test your internal fortitude and living under duress. For me, it was entertaining page turner.
January 31, 2021
4,5 Sterne Äußerst fesselnd in einer sehr präzisen Sprache erzählt der Autor die Geschichte von einem 17jährigen Mädchen aus den Südstaaten. Fay ist in so armen und gewalttätigen Verhältnissen aufgewachsen, wie ich es mir kaum vorstellen kann. Als es unerträglich wird, flieht sie nur mit ein paar Zigaretten und 2 Dollar in der Tasche. Es beginnt eine spannende Reise, auf der sie einige Erfahrungen macht. Einige Kleinigkeiten hatte ich auszusetzen, besonders gegen Ende, deshalb ein halber Stern Abzug. Ich habe es sehr genossen, Fay zu begleiten und der Autor hat so eine Art, Sätze in einen Text einzuschieben, die nichts mit der Szene zu tun hat und man rätselt warum, bis es sich einem erschließt. Das fand ich außergewöhnlich und spannend.
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July 28, 2021!!!VORSICHT SPOILER!!!
...nach knapp 400 Seiten abgebrochen... Der Fokus, der hier auf sexuellen Handlungen wirklich jeglicher Art liegt geht für mich einfach nicht mehr, alle 2,3 Seiten kommt in der Hinsicht wieder so eine Szene, meist Vergewaltigung etc. ... die Handlungen der Protagonisten sind oft nicht nachvollziehbar und Charaktertiefe könnte ich ebenfalls nicht finden ... Sehr schade ...
...nach knapp 400 Seiten abgebrochen... Der Fokus, der hier auf sexuellen Handlungen wirklich jeglicher Art liegt geht für mich einfach nicht mehr, alle 2,3 Seiten kommt in der Hinsicht wieder so eine Szene, meist Vergewaltigung etc. ... die Handlungen der Protagonisten sind oft nicht nachvollziehbar und Charaktertiefe könnte ich ebenfalls nicht finden ... Sehr schade ...
December 1, 2017
dnf
way too descriptive for me.
way too descriptive for me.
September 10, 2023
"And what were people made of and how did they come together to be what they were? What made you be bad or good? Why did good men die and bad men live?"
Whew! Fay is like that train wreck you can see coming but can't stop yourself from watching, if grit lit is your thing then this one is for you, Larry Brown sure knows how to tell a good story. Damaged people, crazy situations, rude language and lots of sex, happy reading😉
Whew! Fay is like that train wreck you can see coming but can't stop yourself from watching, if grit lit is your thing then this one is for you, Larry Brown sure knows how to tell a good story. Damaged people, crazy situations, rude language and lots of sex, happy reading😉
December 2, 2014
4.5 stars
Sex, cigarettes, coffee, and beer on every page...what's not to love...right?
But seriously, Brown's writing, eloquent in its simplicity, is top notch, and while this isn't as good as Father and Son, which has a more subtle tragic component, it had me hooked from the first page and kept me hooked through till the end.
Coincidentally, I had just finished a true crime book that delved into the sex-for-sale industry, so it was especially interesting for me to see how well Brown captured many aspects of that life.
It wasn't perfect. Too many deaths (five in all) that seemed too convenient. And of course, I could see many of the plot twists coming, though that never stopped me from hoping things would work out. Brown just has this way of writing that invests readers, at least readers like me, in his characters. I even found myself caring about minor characters, not because they were nice people, but because Brown brings them to life for better or for worse.
In one of the reviews I read, a reader suggested that Fay really isn't the authentic heroine that some have credited her as being, but a mere device used as a means to reveal the true nature of other characters, and I think on some level I agree, and maybe that's why at the end I found myself caring as much about the costars as the star.
Would definitely recommend to fans of Grit Lit. This isn't a book for everyone and if you're looking for something uplifting, you'd best look elsewhere. Yet if you enjoy writing that explores how our base and primal drives ultimately contribute to who we are and how we act, maybe even more than we would like to admit, then you might enjoy this as much as I did.
Sex, cigarettes, coffee, and beer on every page...what's not to love...right?
But seriously, Brown's writing, eloquent in its simplicity, is top notch, and while this isn't as good as Father and Son, which has a more subtle tragic component, it had me hooked from the first page and kept me hooked through till the end.
Coincidentally, I had just finished a true crime book that delved into the sex-for-sale industry, so it was especially interesting for me to see how well Brown captured many aspects of that life.
It wasn't perfect. Too many deaths (five in all) that seemed too convenient. And of course, I could see many of the plot twists coming, though that never stopped me from hoping things would work out. Brown just has this way of writing that invests readers, at least readers like me, in his characters. I even found myself caring about minor characters, not because they were nice people, but because Brown brings them to life for better or for worse.
In one of the reviews I read, a reader suggested that Fay really isn't the authentic heroine that some have credited her as being, but a mere device used as a means to reveal the true nature of other characters, and I think on some level I agree, and maybe that's why at the end I found myself caring as much about the costars as the star.
Would definitely recommend to fans of Grit Lit. This isn't a book for everyone and if you're looking for something uplifting, you'd best look elsewhere. Yet if you enjoy writing that explores how our base and primal drives ultimately contribute to who we are and how we act, maybe even more than we would like to admit, then you might enjoy this as much as I did.
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August 9, 2014Last May I took a road trip from central Pa to Oxford as well as other cities in Mississippi. I've always admired Faulkner ..but Larry Brown blew me away a few years ago when I discovered his books . I wanted to see some of the bars he frequented and see Rowen Oak and Faulkner's grave . I've been slowly working my way through his work . Fay was the first I've read since I returned and it was so great to read it having been down there..breathing the same air those characters breathed..driving the same roads ..it's been a few weeks and I can't stop wondering how the characters in the novel are faring ..especially Fay . I love when a novel haunts me like that and Larry's books always do that ..I love his conflicted characters dealing with their hurts and dreams ..as in all of his work I love reading about the relationship with his characters and the land they live in ..the lakes to fish in ..the beautiful tall pines . I loved the rhythm of the writing in Fay especially towards the end of the book . Joe is still my fave of his stuff but all of his books are a pleasure to read ..highly recommended
July 30, 2022
Fay Jones comes out of the hills of Mississippi as if she had just been born. Virginal in both mind and body. Beautiful, she turns heads and attracts attention everywhere she goes. She quickly learns that her beauty and her body are her primary currency, but she has a strength of spirit and personality to match the rest of her. Men fall in love with her, not just the physical her, even men who don't fall in love. But it is Fay's indomitable spirit that is her most remarkable attribute. She is a survivor, and woe to you if you threaten her survival.
There is more violence, sex and drinking in this novel than I have encountered in a book in a long time. But for the most part, it fits the world through which Fay travels. The dialogue is excellent, feeling just right in every scene. I did struggle a bit that almost everyone in the novel seems to be an alcoholic or headed quickly in that direction, and I still felt Brown's Father and Son was the better novel, but Fay was very, very good.
There is more violence, sex and drinking in this novel than I have encountered in a book in a long time. But for the most part, it fits the world through which Fay travels. The dialogue is excellent, feeling just right in every scene. I did struggle a bit that almost everyone in the novel seems to be an alcoholic or headed quickly in that direction, and I still felt Brown's Father and Son was the better novel, but Fay was very, very good.
May 25, 2020
The best part about this book is that it ends.
August 10, 2017
Nachdem ich bereits einige Bewertungen zu "Fay" gelesen und gemerkt habe, dass die Meinungen sehr weit auseinandergehen, wurde ich neugierig und wollte dem Buch unbedingt eine Chance geben. Letztendlich gehöre ich zu den Menschen, die das Buch mochten, denn hier erlebt man komplexe Figuren, die man nicht unbedingt ins Herz schließt, ihren Weg aber dennoch gerne mitverfolgt.
Zuerst einmal muss man sagen, dass das Buch trotz seines Alters recht frisch und modern wirkt, denn "Fay" ist bereits erstmals im Jahr 2000 im Original veröffentlicht worden. Dennoch liest sich die Geschichte zum Großteil sehr spannend und angenehm. Man muss zwar zugeben, dass die Geschichte hier und da nicht ohne Längen auskommt, allerdings fand ich die Geschichte insgesamt einfach gut ausgearbeitet. Die Figuren werden bestens beschrieben, man lernt besonders Fay gut kennen und auch die Dialoge wirken oftmals gut ausgearbeitet und nur selten holprig.
Erzählt wird hier die Geschichte von der 17-jährigen Fay, der es in ihrem Zuhause nur noch schlecht geht und kurzerhand beschließt, ihre Familie, insbesondere ihren gewalttätigen Vater, zu verlassen. Mit gerade einmal zwei Dollar und ein paar Zigaretten in der Tasche zieht sie los und erhofft sich ein besseres Leben, in dem Gewalt und Missachtung keine Rolle mehr spielen. Auf ihrem Weg begegnet sie dabei vielen Menschen. Manche wollen ihr helfen, andere wollen sie ausnutzen, doch auch Fay lässt sich nicht alles gefallen und kann trotz ihres Alters gut für sich einstehen.
Dennoch ist Fay nicht zwingend eine Figur, in die man sich schnell hineinversetzen kann. Ich kann zwar verstehen, wieso sie unbedingt weg wollte, allerdings wirkt sie stellenweise noch so unreif und naiv, dass man nur mit dem Kopf schütteln kann. Andererseits wirkt sie jedoch oftmals sehr abgeklärt und selbstbewusst, sodass man sie als deutlich älter einschätzt. Wenn man sich als Leser jedoch bemüht, mehr über das junge Mädchen zu erfahren und sich in sie hineinzuversetzen, wird hier eine interessante und vielseitige Figur erleben, mit der man es jedoch nicht immer leicht hat.
Das Cover wirkt auf der einen Seite sehr idyllisch, gleichzeitig sieht man aber auch, wie einsam es rund um der Farm ist, sodass das Cover auch gut zur Geschichte passt. Die Kurzbeschreibung ist ebenfalls gelungen und hat direkt mein Interesse geweckt, sodass ich Fays Geschichte unbedingt lesen wollte.
Kurz gesagt: Obwohl "Fay" sicherlich alles andere als leicht im Umgang ist, erlebt man hier eine spannende und interessante Geschichte mit komplexen Figuren, die nicht nur zum Nachdenken anrege, sondern einen auch das ein oder andere Mal mit dem Kopf schütteln lassen. Mir hat es gefallen und somit kann ich das Buch nur empfehlen.
Zuerst einmal muss man sagen, dass das Buch trotz seines Alters recht frisch und modern wirkt, denn "Fay" ist bereits erstmals im Jahr 2000 im Original veröffentlicht worden. Dennoch liest sich die Geschichte zum Großteil sehr spannend und angenehm. Man muss zwar zugeben, dass die Geschichte hier und da nicht ohne Längen auskommt, allerdings fand ich die Geschichte insgesamt einfach gut ausgearbeitet. Die Figuren werden bestens beschrieben, man lernt besonders Fay gut kennen und auch die Dialoge wirken oftmals gut ausgearbeitet und nur selten holprig.
Erzählt wird hier die Geschichte von der 17-jährigen Fay, der es in ihrem Zuhause nur noch schlecht geht und kurzerhand beschließt, ihre Familie, insbesondere ihren gewalttätigen Vater, zu verlassen. Mit gerade einmal zwei Dollar und ein paar Zigaretten in der Tasche zieht sie los und erhofft sich ein besseres Leben, in dem Gewalt und Missachtung keine Rolle mehr spielen. Auf ihrem Weg begegnet sie dabei vielen Menschen. Manche wollen ihr helfen, andere wollen sie ausnutzen, doch auch Fay lässt sich nicht alles gefallen und kann trotz ihres Alters gut für sich einstehen.
Dennoch ist Fay nicht zwingend eine Figur, in die man sich schnell hineinversetzen kann. Ich kann zwar verstehen, wieso sie unbedingt weg wollte, allerdings wirkt sie stellenweise noch so unreif und naiv, dass man nur mit dem Kopf schütteln kann. Andererseits wirkt sie jedoch oftmals sehr abgeklärt und selbstbewusst, sodass man sie als deutlich älter einschätzt. Wenn man sich als Leser jedoch bemüht, mehr über das junge Mädchen zu erfahren und sich in sie hineinzuversetzen, wird hier eine interessante und vielseitige Figur erleben, mit der man es jedoch nicht immer leicht hat.
Das Cover wirkt auf der einen Seite sehr idyllisch, gleichzeitig sieht man aber auch, wie einsam es rund um der Farm ist, sodass das Cover auch gut zur Geschichte passt. Die Kurzbeschreibung ist ebenfalls gelungen und hat direkt mein Interesse geweckt, sodass ich Fays Geschichte unbedingt lesen wollte.
Kurz gesagt: Obwohl "Fay" sicherlich alles andere als leicht im Umgang ist, erlebt man hier eine spannende und interessante Geschichte mit komplexen Figuren, die nicht nur zum Nachdenken anrege, sondern einen auch das ein oder andere Mal mit dem Kopf schütteln lassen. Mir hat es gefallen und somit kann ich das Buch nur empfehlen.
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