Fay: A Novel [Hardcover]

Larry Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2000

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. She's headed for the bright lights and big times of Biloxi, and even she knows she needs help getting there. But help's not hard to come by when you look like Fay. There's a highway patrolman who gives her a lift, with a detour to his own place. There are truck drivers who pick her up, no questions asked. There's a crop duster with money for a night or two on the town. There's a strip-joint bouncer who deals on the side. And in the end, there are five dead bodies stacked in Fay's wake. Fay is a novel that could only have been written by Larry Brown, whom the Boston Globe called "one of our finest writers -- honest, courageous, unflinching."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Larry Brown's Fay picks up at the precise moment when its 17-year-old heroine walks out of his 1991 novel Joe. And really, who could blame her? Fay's father, Wade Jones, was one of the most enduring villains in recent fiction, the kind of man who would trade a son for a car and a daughter's virginity for a few $20 bills. Reared in migrant camps, tarpaper shacks, and, most recently, an abandoned cabin, Fay herself is pretty, goodhearted, astonishingly ignorant: in other words, trouble in a too-tight dress and a pair of rotting tennis shoes. Fleeing her father's advances, she takes to the Mississippi road in a passage that, with its rough music, is pure Brown:

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. House lights winked through the trees as she walked and swung her purse from her hand. She could hear cars passing down the asphalt but she was still a long way from that.

For the first time, Brown narrates most of a novel from a woman's point of view, and while the result is every bit as gripping as his previous work, it is also more inward-looking. Joe, for instance, reads like something carved out of a block of granite; in Fay, Brown feels somehow closer to the story--almost tender, or as tender as a writer with such an unflinching gaze can be. As Fay hitchhikes her way down Highway 55, from the woods near Oxford to the beaches and strip bars of Biloxi, she draws both men and violence to her like a magnet. Utterly without envy or self-pity, she is a force of nature, pure and simple, and Fay illuminates just how deadly her kind of innocence can be.

It's no value judgment to say this book is about white trash. Brown knows it, the reader knows it, Fay knows it; at one point, she even muses, "She never had been called a white trash piece of shit before but she'd been called white trash." But don't mistake Brown's work for mere trailer-park sociology. Despite the redneck trappings, the Jones family has been with us since the beginning of time, and their story, like all tragedies, is both larger than life and just like it too. "White trash," after all, is just another way of saying "not many choices." In writing about lives stripped down to their essentials, Brown reminds us of the dark truths our choices sometimes allow us to forget. --Mary Park

From Publishers Weekly

The South of Larry Brown (Dirty Work) is a country devoid of genteel manners and magnolia trees. His deeply flawed characters generally lack money, education and a fair chance at the pursuit of happiness, yet he portrays them square-on, with a restrained compassion that neither panders to nor patronizes their struggling, often violent lives. This saga of degradation and violence is his most powerful novel yet. It is the coming-of-age story of a young woman whose downward trajectory seems fated, despite the glimmers of luck that she hopes are her salvation. Fay Jones is 17 years old when she runs away from her sexually abusive father and the poor white family shack outside of Oxford, Miss. Dangerously innocent and naive about the world (she has never used a telephone or left a tip in a restaurant), she is stoic, resourceful and desperate to better herself. Like everyone else in this novel, she is addicted to beer and cigarettes; whiskey and dope will come later. And she is beautiful, which is both the source of opportunity and the limit of her aspirations. It seems almost too good to be true when trooper Sam Harris rescues Fay and takes her to his lakeside home. His wife, Amy, still grieving over the death of their teenage daughter, takes Fay under her wing. But Amy is an alcoholic, and in one of the car crashes that punctuate the novel--all caused by drunken drivers--she is killed. Though he is already involved with a predatory mistress, Sam falls in love with Fay and she with him; when Fay becomes pregnant; she has a brief vision of a safe and settled life. The cycle of events that ensue--a murder in self-defense, Fay's flight to Biloxi, sexual exploitation, several premeditated killings--are, in the force field of this story, inevitable and preordained. All his characters, including the decent, anguished Sam (who is heroic in his police work) and bewildered, frightened Fay, behave foolishly, rashly and badly. Yet Brown's laconic narrative is constructed on a merciful understanding of his characters' limitations. Though he takes a long time to get the plot under way, describing such mundane activities as fishing and police patrols in the detail necessary to make them clear, the narrative acquires tension and velocity and by the end the reader is mesmerized, waiting for a gun to go off, but praying for a miracle. There are no miracles, of course, but the raw power of this novel, the clear, graphic accounts of both humble and perverted lives (in the bars and strip joints of Biloxi), is a triumph of realism and a humane imagination. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 504 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (March 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565121686
• ISBN-13: 978-1565121683
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #466,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Larry Brown's Big Bad Masterpiece, March 8, 2000

By 

Graham R. Lewis (Charleston, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fay: A Novel (Hardcover)

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!

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Fay' transcends Southern-fried stereotypes, April 4, 2000

By 

"mbj195" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fay: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding Pageturner, May 23, 2000

By 

Gail Scibelli - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fay: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.