Fay

by Larry Brown

Book Overview

She's had no education, and you can't call what her father's been trying to give her love. So at seventeen, Fay Jones leaves home, carrying a purse with half a pack of cigarettes and two dollar bills.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565121686
• ISBN13: 9781565121683
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 504 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

An Outstanding Pageturner

This is a compelling story about a young innocent finding her way through Mississippi circa 1985, before the casinos took over the Gulf Coast. With Fay, Brown has created an engaging heroine who is thoroughly believable. Her journey from backwoods shacks to strip joints, from paternal abuse to true love, pregnancy and tragic loss is moving, often hilarious and unforgettable. Male authors rarely create believable female characters, which is not the case with Fay. The supporting characters are deftly drawn and include a kindly couple (a highway patrolman and his alcoholic wife) who offer Fay shelter, a sexy but dangerous strip club bouncer who falls hard for Fay and his slimy, womanizing half-brother. Despite her tender age (17) and fifth grade education, Fay has an amazing instinct for survival which helps her escape several perilous situations. This book was so incredible that I gobbled it down in two days. "Fay" is a thrilling page-turner that is also a beautifully written, poignant tale. It was my first introduction to Larry Brown and I'm so grateful that I found it. I strongly recommend this book to readers who appreciate fine writing as well as those seeking a great original story. If readers like this book, they should also check out two other fine books by Brown: "Big Bad Love," a tremendous collection of short stories, and "Father and Son," another novel.

"Baby Doll" with True Grit

Nobody writes about rednecks and Southern rogues better than Larry Brown. In this big, ambitious book he charts a new variant on previous work, giving the reader a sprawling tale of the down-and-out on the Gulf Coast which focuses primarily on a female. There are plenty of the 'good ole boys' that one expects of Brown in ths picaresque tale, but it is Fay's story. Naturally beautiful and sexy, seventeen year old Fay is also dumber than a sack of nails and about as passive. She comes by her ignorance honestly, since she has no real education and has been raised in abject poverty in a family of migrant workers. Walking away from a life she hates and fears into a world she knows nothing about, she becomes a lightning rod for trouble. Mostly man trouble. From initial encounters with a truckload of drunken young men she progresses through a series of 'adventures' that quickly become entangled in one another. By the end of the story there is a trail of wreckage from Oxford to Gulf Shores that includes damaged and dead bodies, destroyed lives and lost hope.Fay is a complex character and her story, while disturbing, rings true. There is tragedy here but there is also a good deal of simple humanity. Fay can be a tough lady when she has to be, but she has a fundamental sweet side that makes her an easy mark. The reader keeps wanting to scream, "NO, don't do it" - knowing full well that she will, will then regret it and have no idea how to make it OK. True life. I enjoyed this book as much as anything I have read in ages. It isn't a pleasant book, but characters like Aaron and his brother, though ugly, are quite real. One of the things I liked best about this novel was Brown's choice to shift the point of view from player to player, so that we see the story from the eyes of many characters as it unfolds. Anyone wanting a honest, tough, uncompromising look at humans on the edge should read this book. I highly recommend it.

'Fay' transcends Southern-fried stereotypes

One word best describes Larry Brown's writing: brutal. The north Mississippi writer's latest work of fiction, "Fay," is filled with characters, events and pain which amplify the everyday brutality of many lower-class whites in Mississippi. Of course in writing about these increasingly marginalized women and men, Brown also says much about all of us: who we are, who we love, who we hate and what it means to live and to die as Southerners. Along the way, Larry Brown also tells one fine story."Fay" is one of those novels that you should read on a deck or a dock, maybe in the sand at the beach, with a six-pack of cold, cheap beer next to you. Read a few pages, take a sip. Think about what it is you've read.After 489 pages, you'll shake your head in disbelief at Fay Jones and the lives she brightens, enlightens and ends. "That can't be. Who are these people? What are they thinking? This isn't real." But it is. And that's the beauty - and gift - of Larry Brown: He tells the truth from the darkest of our hearts.

Almost as good as Joe

Larry Brown illuminates the underside of human nature like few authors can; his characters read like sin with a soul. The style of Fay is raw and ingenuous, the pace at once plodding and breakneck. In Fay Brown sticks a knife in your thigh and waits until you can almost forget about it, then he twists it with unrelenting ferocity. Fay is the stuff of human life, in Brown's traditional plain language. Read it.

Larry Brown's Big Bad Masterpiece

Larry Brown's FAY is absolutely incredible. This is the "big book" his fans have been waiting for. Picking up on the character of Fay Jones as she exited his novel JOE, Brown has created something most unexpected--a living, breathing female main character that pulses with the same intensity his male characters always have. You don't have be familiar with JOE to dive into FAY (but I'd recommend JOE as a fabulous read as well), as Fay's story stands on its own quite well. All the elements of Brown's other books are here: the drinking, the killing, the aimless riding around in Mississippi's lovely countryside--but his handling of Fay's character is especially tender this time around and what happens to her will hurt you in ways you won't expect. Yes, it's long. And yes, it's a bit slower paced than Brown's other novels. But it's a doozy of a book that should earn the author his first National Book Award nomination. Buy it now!