Fay: A Novel

by Larry Brown

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.

• ISBN10: 0743205383
• ISBN13: 9780743205382
• Publish Date: 1 April 2001 (first published 31 March 2000)
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Edition: Scribner PB Fic ed.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 498
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Larry Brown looks at things square-on, drinks you under the table, kicks your ass and breaks your heart. Full of tenderness, without pity, he shows up a hard life for what it is: a little bit of good luck and a lot more bad luck, cold hard reality and largehearted hope, prayer for a miracle without a miracle in the end. What’s best though, even better than that, he gives you so much of the why and how of people, you can’t ever look at the what the same way again.

“Don’t say what you would or wouldn’t do, honey. Cause one day you might have to.”

I loved Sam most. And of course Fay, sweet Fay.

First read December 2011

- - -

November 2012:

I thought it was Jewel and Mary and Virgil of Father and Son who would stick with me so vividly this year, but no. It’s Sam and Fay. Brown wrote this himself when Fay wouldn’t let him alone, when he couldn’t stop thinking what happened to her after Joe. It shows. It bleeds right through the page, that affection-without-pity. Powerful and contagious.

And the second time through it’s even more tremendous, how simply and fully Sam and Fay are brought to real life. I dare you to even try to judge people the same way after this one. It’s one of the several contributors, why I barely have any tolerance left for the people in books who only say and do and think the right things and think that makes them good.

We sabotaged a whole factory of magic eight balls so they only tell the truth, was the Softer World strip the other day. We are all fucked, and we are all saved.

And like a hundred other things in the course of a week I thought, Fay.