A review by bjr2022
Facing the Music by Larry Brown

5.0

Whether he is writing the inner dialogue of a drunk black woman or a white farmer at the end of his rope or a boy seeking revenge for the death of his dog, there is something so raw and intimately, delicately human here. Brown distills the most private human confusion, shame, hubris, hurt, anger, and self-delusion into spare writing that goes into the reader like emotion pushed through an IV. I found myself rocking and moaning. The range and diversity of the writing is also perfection. He’ll play with the short story form, turning it into a lyrical poem or, in a story recalling a memory, disorganized fragments — as if he wrote a story, tore it into individual sentences, then pieced them together randomly. And the creation relays the way memory really works. One of my favorite stories in this collection, “Night Life,” left me gasping. And the last story, “End of Romance,” was one of the most violent and hilarious pieces of work I’ve ever read. There is no way to intuit where Larry Brown will take you. This is magnificent writing, and the book’s title is perfect.

The edition I read ends with Brown’s letters to his publisher. Larry Brown (1951–2004) was a fireman and family man who loved to write. His letters make you moan in a different kind of way; you just wish he could have lived longer and that you could have met him.