Fay by Larry Brown

Reading this book is like passing a car wreck on the highway. You get caught in the backup first, not knowing what is ahead. Emergency vehicles pass you, lights flashing and sirens blaring. You could get of the highway, turn around, take another route. But you stick it out, and eventually, up ahead, you can see the wreck. Twisted wreckage, bodies on stretchers. You gape. Even after you pass the wreck you are slow to accelerate. You can't look away.

That's Larry Brown's "Fay". It's another in the series of Southern Gothics (or in this case, Grit Lit) that I am reading. It's a simple style, heavy on the "to be" verbs, light on action verbs and adverbs. Definitely not purple prose, but also not as spare as Hemingway. Brown is also not terse. The book is full of long descriptions of drinking, driving, drinking and driving, sex, drugs, fishing, and strip joints. All the essential features of the rural South.

You know it's going to end badly, but of all the endings I could imagine, the real ending is not the one I would have picked. Honestly, by the time the book was over I was ready for someone to shoot Fay.

By all means read it, but be prepared to stare at the wreck on the highway.