A review by pbobrit
Facing the Music by Larry Brown

4.0

Larry Brown's first published work, a collection of 10 short stories. As the title of the book, and also the first story in the collection indicate the overarching theme of the tales in this work are about facing the consequences of some action either occurring in the story or in a characters past. The characters whilst all having a distinctly Southern flavour are magnificently varied and colourful. Larry Brown experiments with a number of story telling structures, from one story made up of sentences of exactly five words to what seems to be a cut up technique in another. Some stories read easier than others but even those that require more work to read are ultimately rewarding. It must have been obvious to Algonquin when they were reading and publishing this collection that they had a major talent on their hands and Larry Brown went on to prove that he was just that. Highly recommend for Larry Brown fans and Southern literature geeks.