Big Bad Love

This book is such a powerful surprise that it is hard to know what to say. So many short stories one encounters in magazines and anthologies are so much 'in the tradition' that they could have been written by any number of writers. Larry Brown's stories, however, have an assured, unique and very personal style that is unlike anything else I have read. These first person confessionals by obsessed (and not too self aware) characters are gripping and funny all at the same time. There is a truth here - about language and behavior - that most authors rarely achieve.I opened this collection of stories intending to read just one, in order to get a feel for Brown's work - which I have heard praised many times. I found myself glued to the book and finished it in one afternoon - obsessed like his characters. This is so like the high octane, drug and booze fueled narrative one gets occasionally in James Ellroy's L.A. series, but without the complex plot or life and death action. Here we see individuals - mostly down and out - struggling with their own personal demons in the red neck world of roadside taverns, pickup trucks, squalid domestic situations and many, many back roads. Brown is able to give us the grit of Harry Crews's south without the qrotesque elements. The hard truth is here, and the humor too, but these are people that I have known. I just never cared for them as much as I do after seeing them pass through the filter of Brown's fierce vision.Great stuff.

I had never heard of Larry Brown untill I read this, I'm from Scotland and wanted something good on conpemporary life and romance in America from a modern angle. Liked it a lot. "The apprentice" was one of the funniest storries I have ever read.

Larry Brown knows how to reach into his guts and pull out stories so true they hurt. Big Bad Love is -- and I know this term is terribly overused -- a masterpiece. Each one of his books is a small, burning miracle: Joe; Father and Son; Facing the Music; Dirty Work; On Fire.The man knows life and he knows how to write about it.(By the way, if you like Larry Brown, try Barry Hannah. While they are different in style, each one plumbs the depths of the human soul in a way few other contemporary authors dare.)

okay, so i'll be the first to admit that maybe larry brown's style and content are acquired tastes, what with his predilection for setting his characters smack in the center of unseemly situations in unseemly bars. that's no excuse for not shelling out the $10 for this one. i've read the final story, "92 days", perhaps sixty times, and it's just as moving each time. he's a difficult writer to describe without sounding maudlin; let it suffice to say that larry brown sees the beauty in waking up at six a.m., going out onto the front porch, lighting a cigarette, taking a deep breath, and trying to figure out what comes next. and, as an aforementioned story should be a minor miracle

Larry Brown is a genius who combines the rich Southern tradition of Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner with the intensely honest introspection of Charles Bukowski and Jim Thompson. Nearly always moving, often darkly hilarious, always involving, Big Bad Love is a masterpiece, ten stories of mind-shatteringly powerful fiction.