Tiny Love: The Complete Stories of Larry Brown

The complete stories of Brown (1951–2004) are collected in this outstanding, capacious volume. A writer that takes readers to the darkest and strangest corners of the Deep South, Brown peers into the lives of the broken, eccentric, and desperate. In stories including “Tiny Love,” where a man’s obsessive love for his wife leads to a distraction causing maiming at the steel stamping plant where he works, and “Leaving Town” where a woman leaves her infants alone in the house to hang out at the bar, Brown looks at the strangest forms of love. A woman drives her dying husband miles along the back roads of Mississippi to hunt down a famous faith healer, only to be stopped by the highway patrol who discover her dead husband strapped into the front seat in “A Roadside Resurrection.” Another woman gets flashed when taking out the garbage in “Waiting for the Ladies,” and her husband follows the flasher to his home to kill him. In bars, run-down shacks, and dark corners of the Mississippi forests and swamps, Brown’s characters drown in alcohol while struggling to escape isolation, distorted relationships, and failed dreams. There are also angst-filled stories heavy with the struggles and failures of writers. In “92,” an author drinks himself into oblivion as he continues to receive rejection after rejection from publishers. In “Discipline,” Brown imagines writers in a prison camp for plagiarizers with guards as editors. Whether exploring the underbelly of love or the despair of editorial rejection, Brown’s stories drip with often uncomfortable detail as he describes the crass, the ugly, and the broken in ways unique and captivating. [em](Nov.) [/em]