My first five-star read of this year, yet I didn't 'love' every story in this collection of ten shorts (nine stories and one 87 page novella). So how does that work? Well, the power of Larry Brown's writing in this second collection of his is such that while I don't think that everything he tries to do here is a complete success, the value and impact of his creation when it IS a success is so overwhelming that I have no choice but to give the book the highest rating. The novella "92 Days" which closes the collection is among the very best of his work, and probably one of the best shorter stories I've ever read.

These stories show us characters familiar to Brown's rural Mississippi. Mostly male, working class, and white, these characters often drink too much, have difficult or failed marriages, and are frequently running into trouble. They clearly follow a range of autobiographical themes. The stories are grouped in three sections. The first features the opening eight salvos, and then the second and third sections include a satirical dialogue - "Discipline" - where a writer on trial stands accused of plagiarism (that I didn't care for so much), and the novella "92 Days" respectively.

In the opening story "Falling Out of Love" - '...it was an evening as fine as you could ask for except that we had two flat tires on our car some miles back down the road and didn't know where we were or who to ask. Besides this main emergency, I knew things weren't right.'

"The Apprentice" is an amusing insight into the life of a struggling author pre-publication, and how the obsessive compulsion to write can affect a marriage. It is the male narrator's wife Judy who wanted to be the writer: '...I didn't know what to do. If I said it was bad, she'd sull up or maybe cry. She cried a lot when I didn't like her stuff. And if I said it was good when it really wasn't, she'd get very encouraged and sit right down and type it up all nice and neat and send it off to "Playboy" or somewhere, and then get all broke down when it came back rejected.'

"Wild Thing" is a hopeless tale of an unhappily married forklift driver who has an affair with a younger married woman he meets in a downtown bar. The title story then sees Brown explore another side of matrimonial unhappiness: his narrator Leroy, is spending time in town drinking and playing Tom T Hall songs on the jukebox, avoiding going home and having to bury his dead dog, and his wife Mildred who '...was sexually frustrated because of her overlarge organ...'

"Gold Nuggets" sees a slight change of scenery, but not flavour, as the story is set among the strip bars and back alleyways of a Gulf Coast harbour town. The pathetic narrator is in town with a pot of money to pick up shrimp for himself and his associates - who he doesn't even like. He promptly falls victim to the tawdry attractions the town has for him. 'It was a bar somewhere between Orange Grove and Pascagoula, one of those places where they charge you nothing to get in and then five dollars for a ten-ounce Schlitz. It was dark. Everyone had on sunglasses but me...'

'...They hadn't even set it on the table when the other one leaned over and said she wanted one, too. So I bought her one. And told her to bring me another beer. I didn't care. I wanted to wake up broke and sober. I figured if I couldn't buy a drink, I couldn't get a drink. We jawed some old shit, it didn't matter what we said. We all knew the score. Their job was to rob me, my job was to pay for the robbery. All night long if possible.'

"Waiting for the Ladies" is a powerful story of a man whose wife tells of a flasher exposing himself at the local dump. The narrator is newly out of work and has enough time on his hands to ride around looking for the pervert, fantasising about what he'll do to him given the chance. The story reveals far more about the narrator than you'd initially expect.

Then, "Old Soldiers", a poignant tale of Leo, a Vietnam veteran spending time with Mr Aaron - a WW2 veteran who fought with Leo's father in Europe. Leo frequents Mr Aaron's general store where they drink together and tell stories. A 3rd character, Squirrel, is a local barfly in his 50s or 60s, and a mutual friend of both. One evening sees Leo 'trapped' at the bar - looking for a good time but instead, mildly annoyed, nursing a drunk Squirrel who needs a ride home...

'"I was on the front lines at Korea," he said. I looked sideways at him.
"I didn't know that," I said.
"Hell yes."
I listened then, because moments like that are rare, when you get to hear about these things that have shattered men's lives. I knew my daddy never got the war out of his head. When he got to drinking that's what he'd talk about. Mama said when they first got married he'd wake himself up screaming from a nightmare of hand-to-hand combat, knives and bayonets and gun stocks. With sweat all over him like he'd just stepped from water. I listened to Squirrel.'

The final story - "92 Days" is the novella which alone is easily worth the book's price. Brown immerses us into a world very similar to that which he himself had not long recently been in. The struggling author (though unlike Brown 'Lonnie' is divorced from his wife and never sees his young kids) spends his days writing and drinking, and opening the mail with dread. He reads Faulkner and Bukowski and tries to picture Betti DeLoreo, the editor who wrote him a rejection letter, full of compliments for his 'voice', and encouragement to not give it up. His ex-wife keeps the pressure on for alimony and child support, while he has a finite number of days to keep on writing full time before his money runs out altogether, and he goes back to house painting.

'I went down and checked the mail. Water bill, light bill, phone bill, and somebody wanting to give me an AM/FM radio worth $39.95 if I bought a quarter acre of land in some resort area in Arkansas for $6800. Nothing from Betti DeLoreo. But at least nothing had come back. Yet. I had fourteen stories on their way to or back from various editorial offices across America.
I went back to the house, opened a beer, and sat down at the machine. I sat there all afternoon waiting for it to say something to me and it never did.'

But Lonnie writes plenty of stories. One he starts is about a widowed go-go dancer called Marie, locking her three sleeping children in the car in the parking lot. She ends up quitting and riding '...around for a while, wondering why her husband hadn't had enough sense to buy life insurance. She didn't have enough dog food for their dog.

At this point I realized I couldn't help them, realized I wasn't a writer, and threw it away, which scared the shit out of me.'

I think Larry Brown is one hell of a writer, and this is a superb collection, whose images and characters will stay with me a long time. ( )