After an Oprah-esque beginning focusing on the bereaved family, this is one of the best "true-crime" books that I've read - although the exposed failures of "the system" are truly frustrating.

On September 14, 1987, someone brutally murdered mayor-wannabe Margaret Sherry and her husband, Vincent the Judge, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Through intention, incompetence, obstruction, or neglect, there were investigative blunders. But the persistence of the Sherry's daughter, Lynne Sposito, eventually focused suspicion on Judge Sherry's former law partner and mayor-wannabe Peter Halat, and a cabal of convicts over in Louisiana s Angola prison.

Author Ed Humes steers this saga well - churning through the moral murkiness of Biloxi and far throughout the South - touching such folks as Senator Robert S. Kerr; Jim Garrsion; the Sherriff who walked tall - Buford Pusser; and the Bishop of Biloxi - who tried to intercede on behalf of one of those convicted in this mess.

Reviewers have likened this story to a John Grisham novel. This is not a "Grisham-like" tale. Seems to me like this is a true tale from which Grisham created fiction. The scam at the fetid heart of the 1987 Sherry murder conspiracy, the "lonely hearts" bilking and extortion from gay men, is real similar to the scam in the center of Mississippi-native Grisham's later novel, "The Brethren."

Usually in fiction, the Good Guys "get their man" or woman, or gang of bad folk. The Hardcover edition of Mississippi Mud is stuck with the "ending" that is no end. Why? Maybe because "Pete Halat had his supporters - a majority of voters had elected him mayor, after all. And apart from questions of his guilt or innocence, there was Biloxi's long history of wearing moral blinders. While shopping one day, a businesswoman she had known for years asked Lynne why she insisted on stirring up trouble, causing investigations and trials that hurt Biloxi's image. 'It's sewerage, honey, I know, but it's our sewerage,' the woman complained. 'If we want to swim in it, y'all ought to let us.'" (page 313-314)

Hume's book illuminates the cesspool. (Stay tuned for Updates contained in the Paperback.)

I was involved with the Sherry case in Biloxi, so I know the truth when I read it. This book tells it all. Yes, it does read like a thriller, better than Grisham, in my opinion, but that doesn't mean its not all true. This is journalism at its best. It seems clear that there is one or two people out there cramming this site with repeat bad reviews. Don't be deceived by their phony compalints. They are liars -- probably friends of the crooks who are revealed for what they are in Mississippi Mud, if not the crooks themselves. Read this book if you want the finest in true -- and I mean TRUE -- crime writing.

Edward Humes ranks with Joan Didion, John McPhee and Tracy Kidder as one of the finest nonfiction writers in America today, with a distinctive literary style and a knack for finding the stories -- and the subtle truths behind them - that the rest of us miss. Humes' books deserve a much wider audience than they have received; MISSISSIPPI MUD stands out as the true-crime masterpiece of the 1990s, a probingly researched page-turner about corruption, betrayal and one woman's quest to avenge her parents' murder. I can think of no other book that so evocatively -- and accurately -- portrays the soul, the heart, and the evil within a community as Humes does with Biloxi, MS, and its villainous mayor, conscienceless crime lords and citizenry content to look the other way. MISSISSIPPI MUD compares favorable to Ann Rule's "The Stanger Beside Me," Jack Olsen's "Doc," and, for that matter, the nonfiction of Wambaugh, Mailer, Capote and Wolfe. MUD is fascinating, compulsively readable and -- as anyone can tell from the author's thorough sourcing and journalist integrity (all too lacking in other works of "true crime" -- absolutely accurate. That he has touched a raw nerve among the friends of corruption, crime and the status quo is obvious from some of the reader comments that continue to emanate from Biloxi years after the book came out. Let them rant! Maybe the controversy will bring Humes and MISSISSIPPI MUD the readers it deserves!

I first bought this book a year ago, seeing it laying on a table of "recommended books" at [a store] and thinking to myself that it sounded intriguing. I got home, opened it up and....put it down w/in ten minutes. Being somewhat widely read, this does not often happen to me, but I admit I found this book at first utterly boring.

However, a few days ago, I decided to try again and this time I opened up the book-and kept reading. The story draws you in slowly, until you feel you are present in shellmound, sitting in the settee in the corner watching this all take place. The setting description was vividly realistic, the characters believable. The characters ARE the plot line: the novel unfolds through the eyes of both outsiders (ellen and laura) and also through the eyes of the fairchilds themselves [in the forms of shelley and dabney].

This thought provoking narrative of a large and intricately woven Southern family is brought to life through the evocative words of eudora welty, and stays in the heart long after the last page is turned.

Reading "Delta Wedding" is like attending a family wedding and meeting all your distant relatives for the first time. You have a sense of belonging and, at the same time, a sense of being an outsider. Everyone seems to know everyone so much better than you do and you're rushing to catch up on everyone's story and sort out who is who. This is a relatively short book, but perhaps because she is primarily a short-story writer, Eudora Welty has packed this book so densely with character and detail, you will feel as though you have read a family saga of many hundred pages. The delta is recreated in such detail that you can feel the humid, misty breezes and hear the crickets chirping. The young girls through whose perspective you watch the proceedings are enchanting. Struggling to keep track of the characters forced me to go back and re-read parts of the book at times, which was, in fact, helpful in discovering important overlooked details. This is a book you can re-read many times always discovering something or someone new. Eudora Welty ranks at the very top of Southern writers and American writers in general.

I had to read this for a Lit of the American South class I'm taking for my M.A. I read it in two days with a study guide close at hand as well as several background articles on Welty. I'm grateful for the additional materials, but even without them I know I would have found much to praise in this book.

When I first started to read, my professor suggested compiling a list of characters and their relationships in order to assist in keeping everyone straight. This was excellent advice and allowed me to read without getting too bogged down in character names and trying to figure out who was allied with whom, etc etc.

The novel is ostensibly a portrait of one Southern family. On a broader perspective, one can view it as a deconstruction of the American South with its age-old social structures and isolationism. But it can also be taken on a much more universal level. Anyone who has ever felt like an outsider in any milieu will relate to Ellen Fairchild, Laura McEvern, and Robbie Reid. Families across the world aren't so different. Robbie's statement in the novel's climax: "I didn't marry into them, I married George!" is, I thought, particularly insightful.

I honestly can't praise this book enough. It has inspired me to want to read more of Welty's work as well as other great Southern writers. An excellent introduction...

In some ways, perhaps in structure and narrative tone, it reminded me of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

Again, this is one of the greatest books I have ever read!

Enjoy!

I have rarely encountered a book which is such an absolute pleasure to read, line for line, page for page. A friend in the US sent it to me recently and I hope it will be published here in the UK soon. This book really must be made available to book-lovers everywhere. So many of the Amazon reviews limit Brad Watson's immense skills as a writer to Southern Gothic or whatever -- that kind of pigeonholing is absurd. This is world-class writing with a Southern accent and universal appeal - utterly humanising, with a magnanimous sweep across time, character, life and death. If you adore books, don't miss this.

The concept of heaven - whether one believes it exists or not - is one that has as many facets as there are souls to discuss it. Alice Sebold depicted one vision of it beautifully and brilliantly in her novel THE LOVELY BONES - Brad Watson has given us another literary treasure that touches the reader's heart just as deeply in his first novel, THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY.

Watson's book is, of course, about much more than an individual's vision and experience of heaven - it is a finely wrought, rich tapestry that gives us a living, breathing view of Southern life (although so much of what its characters feel and experience is universal), one that touches on emotions and truths so deeply, yet gently, that we know them as if they were our own. His writing is awesomely beautiful, yet honest and forthright - there is no superficiality here, and I never got the feeling that even a single word was put there to impress the reader. Watson is telling a story that he feels in his soul - and has filled this novel with characters that are so real that their presence can be felt in the room.

One of the beauties of his prose is how easily it rolls along, bearing not only the story and characters, but the reader as well, along with it. I found myself re-reading many a passage in wonder, amazed that I had traveled its length to arrive at the end, almost unaware of the journey. In developing his characters in the reader's mind's eye, the author employs incredibly distinctive voices - distinctive not only for their speech and thoughts, but in the narrative surrounding them.

What seems at first to be a surreal quality to Watson's writing reveals itself, upon further consideration, to actually be more of an 'ultra-reality' - people, events, emotions and settings are placed so close to the reader's perception that they seem blurred and bent, adding to the mystical/mythical qualities of the tale. The characters' lives are seen not just through their own memories, but also through the memories of those around them, giving varied slants on events they hold in common - personal v. universal memory. Watson's depiction of the 'heaven' or 'hell' we experience after death - those of specific souls often overlapping - is presented in much the same fashion. It's a concept that might seem self-contradictory until one sees it laid out so beautifully and skillfully, in the context of the story - viewed thusly, it makes perfect and natural sense.

The story itself centers on the life of one Finus Bates - from his early years to the end of his life - and his life-long love for Birdie Wells. Theirs is a deep, close friendship - and a star-crossed love. The book follows their lives - and the lives of other citizens of the fictional town of Mercury, Mississippi - in non-chronological but perfectly sensible order, through friendships, marriages (each to another partner), trials, tribulations, and the ins and outs of everyday life. Far from being a boring picture of mundane lives in a small Southern town, THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY is a luminous portrayal of memorable individuals living through times of great change - from the early 20th century to the present day. As in most stories set in the South in these decades, race is definitely one of the players - and Watson tells it like it was (and is), doing so with great respect and love for all of those involved. As ugly as some of the things that have happened around the race issue might be, they must be viewed in an honest light if we are to learn from them. Only when we settle with the past can we advance.

THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY is an incredible reading experience - one that I can heartily recommend, full to the brim with amazingly good writing. I first read an excerpt from this novel (the chapter 'The dead girl') that was included in the wonderful collection STORIES FROM THE BLUE MOON CAFÉ. I subsequently read Brad Watson's short story collection LAST DAYS OF THE DOG MEN (both highly recommended as well). The talent and promise I saw in these didn't lead me astray - this is an amazing novel (especially for a first effort), and I look forward to reading more.

Not many novelists can get to the heart of the reader as does Brad Watson in The Heaven of Mercury. Of modern writers David Adams Richards, Richard Flanagan and Roth in his recent American trilogy have been able to achieve this by their understanding of their locale and the intricacies of the human heart. William Faulkner understood the place of home in all his great works.

What Brad Watson achieves in this brilliant first novel is simply how the place we are brought up in shapes our lives. The attitudes and prejudices are all there. How do we deal with them? If you read this book you will get more than a clue. As a plus it is a great story

This novel is not, as some of your reviewers have suggested, Souhern Gothic but great literature. How it failed to win the National Book Award is beyond me. But I guesss books that don't pussyfoot around are not rewarded in the Bush years.

This is the 3rd Anna Pigeon mystery I have read, the others were first Deep South, the second Liberty Falling and now Hunting Season. I think her writing is very well done and her novels keep my interest from the beginning and I keep on going if I have the time. This plot is well done, kept me guessing until the very end. I am now reading Firestorm and plan to read each of her mysteries.
Nevada Barr is great!

I've read all the Anna Pigeon books and this is one of the best. As always, the author's knowledge of natural settings and creatures adds greatly to the enjoyment. The mystery is a good one, exploring more aspects of Anna's character, especially her vulnerability because of her small size and the fact that she is the "boss" and uneasy in her new position. The descriptions of the different reactions of other characters (co-workers, other law enforcers, townspeople and suspects) are excellent, exploring Mississippians using their present and past to explain their different reactions to situations.

Anna's romance with Sheriff Paul Davidson, with its ups and downs, adds interest and humanity to Anna's character. Too bad there isn't more about sister Molly!

Since reading "Deep South", I have visited the Natchez Trace Parkway. Both that book and this one evoke the area, its eerieness and its history very well.

I have mixed feelings about Nevada Barr's Hunting Season. On the one hand, I wanted to see Ranger Anna Pigeon end up somewhere new rather than the Natchez Trace Parkway. I like to revisit National Parks that I have personally visited or learn about a park I've never been to through each new Anna Pigeon novel. The fact that Hunting Season might be considered Deep South Part Two made it seem a less enticing read at first. On the other hand, it was nice to see the more detailed character development that a return visit to a location allowed AND it is realistic to have Anna stay in one place for longer than she normally seems to. Ultimately, the novel was very exciting and it kept me up to the wee hours of the morning several nights in a row. Local politics, poached deers, unmarked graves, shifting loyalties, folk art, and lots and lots of driving up and down the Natchez Trace Parkway all play a roll in this dark, damp mystery. This isn't the best Anna Pigeon novel nor is it a perfect 5 stars, but it was far enough past 4 stars to give it the full 5.

A book actually worth reading. The book was fairly good from the start, and I truly liked it. Sure, it breaks some of the rules of writing. So what! But if you are going to judge this book based on who wrote it, and that fact alone, then that's your problem.

The book in itself is about Holly Faye Lovell, a fourteen-year-old living in Biscay, Mississippi. Holly and her mother don't have much money, and even though Holly wants to go to Haverty, the Performing Arts school, she shoves the thought of it in the back of her mind. Her boyfriend, Tyler, records her singing, and sends it to Haverty. Holly is then asked to audition, and later makes it into the school. Her roomate is a rich girl named Ditz, who Holly helps out in the end. I won't give away the ending. But read it for yourself, regardless of who wrote it.

Candace

I'm am a huge Britney fan! Yes, I bought the book because of that. Yet, it turned out to be a lot deeper than I expected. The plot line concerns a girl named Holly Lovell and her mother, Wanda Jo. Holly loves to sing, and she is great at it! Her and her mother have a very tight bond together. A bond that begins to crumble when Holly gets accepted into a very rich, and very nice music school, Harverty. As soon as she arrives, she feels embarrassed by her humble beginnings and her homeade clothes, compared to the other rich girls'. But, her room-mate, Ditz, is fascinated by her small town and loving mother, as opossed to her parents that buy her everything just to get her out of the way, and never have any time for her. At the end of the book, Holly's mom tells Holly a very crushing secret that could destroy their relationship forever.......Read it, you'll love it.

This book is all about a girl who wants to become a star. Britney Spears book called a mother's gift is all about Wanda and Holly. Also recommended: Hanson: Pop People, Bayside Madness, Computer Confusion, Behind the Scene with Saved by the bell, Mark-Paul Gosselaar(Zack Morris)Ultimate Gold and other Britney Spears Books. If you are a Britney fan, then this book is for you.

The Last Girls tells the story of five women who attended college together and took a raft trip, along with several other girls, down the Mississippi in 1965.
They are reunited for a cruise down the Mississippi after the death of one of the group. The cruise provides an occasion for all of them to review their lives, individually and together, to piece together their memories of what happened among them 35 years earlier and at how they arrived where they are in their personal lives.
Lee Smith is a gifted writer, creating a beautiful, clear picture of a young woman's life in the mid-60's, and while many people had many different experiences, everyones' are unique.
The characters all had an edgey, unfinished but done, feel to them. In different ways they are not complete and the feeling was that they were frozen in a period of time and emotion and the capability and capacity to move on and grow and change seems to elude them. This was not a comfortable read, but it was thought provoking. The Southern history was interesting and readable, not intrusive. The problem I had with this book is that , for me , there was not a character that I identified with or felt "close" to.....hmmmmmm on second thought, that is probably a good thing!! It is, in a way, like attending a school reunion and realizing that the"popular" crowd had already had their moments in the sun, a long time ago, and that any envy you had in school for them is replaced by realizing that it was not warranted and acknowleding all the good in your own life.

I was astonished to read the dismissive and angry reviews of Lee Smith's new book, The Last Girls, on this page. The characters I spent time with were heartbreakingly real to me -- I knew those women. She captures a time and a place in our culture that is long gone -- hence the title. 1965 was not 1969, not even 1967, in terms of political consciousness. The women in this book came of age before the great social upheaval, as their stories so poignantly underscore. That makes them no less interesting, instead, their world feels like unexplored territory to me. How could anyone could read about Charlotte's memories on the riverbank with her brother, digging in the mud, and dismiss her as "cardboard"? This book is full of great small moments, movingly rendered. And it's funny, too.
Lee Smith is a treasure, and her writing is infused with heart and soul and brains -- all the stuff that makes readers return to her work again and again. Read this book. It's brilliant.

Lee Smith is amazing. In her deceptively simple style, she offers up remarkably complex characters and stories that stay with you long after you finish reading. Her intuition and humor and generosity are evident on every page. Her fiction has always sprung from a deep place in her...whether it is an account of a mountain evangelist, or in the case of The Last Girls, the story of four college friends who recreate a trip down the Mississippi after thirty-some-odd years. This latest offering is rare because its time frame is contemporary, and it's interesting to see that her strengths are undiminished in writing about women we immediately recognize and identify with. I have always liked Lee Smith's books, and have consistently turned my friends onto her work. I am an addictive reader, and am always struck by her particular voice, which is unlike any other writer's I know of: an unpretentious, intelligent and honest telling of stories, with an easy wit and poignancy. The portraits she draws are almost anthropological in their mining of culture and incident -- I always learn something. The Last Girls is no different. Read this, and everything else you can get your hands on that she's done: Oral History, The Devil's Dream, Fair and Tender Ladies, Saving Grace...they are all varied and worth your time. [...]

This book is the conclusion of Welty's thematic trilogy of Southern family life: while "Delta Wedding" concerns a family gathering for a marriage ceremony and "Losing Battles" relates the events surrounding a family reunion celebrating a matriarch's 90th birthday, "The Optimist's Daughter" is about a funeral. Like her previous works, this last of Welty's novels deals primarily with emotions rather than actions, with character rather than plot. Unlike any of her previous novels, however, this short work has both feet planted firmly in the last half of the twentieth century.

Laurel, a widow not entirely recovered from the loss of her husband many years earlier, returns home and finds herself completely without family. Her father dies, leaving in his wake the appropriately named Fay, a vulgar second wife who represents everything Laurel isn't and her mother wasn't. The rest of the novel describes the various attempts by Fay and by the friends of her father to reshape their recollections of his life to their own needs; a particular humorous scene describes four elderly neighborhood women criticizing both Fay and the deceased--more to affirm their own sense of superiority than to comfort Laurel, who endures every word of their conversation. After Fay leaves town for a few days with her trailer-trash relatives (who cause quite a stir when they show up for the funeral), Laurel is left alone to wander through her childhood home and wonder about her family's past. By the end of the novel, Laurel realizes that neither Fay nor her father's neighbors can take away the only things left in her life: her memories of her parents and her future.

Because of its leisurely pacing, this book isn't for everyone. To say that nothing happens is not entirely accurate: although it's a short book, it's difficult to summarize in even a few paragraphs. It is beautifully written, it's easy to read, and the novel has richly drawn characters--but some readers may feel the novel itself lacks character. Once I finished the book, I was not sure whether or not I liked it, and I don't feel it's her best. At times the book almost collapses under the weight of its own heavy-handed symbols: the birds, the mountains, the thunderstorm, the breadboard. The novel repays a few hours of reflection and rereading, however: passages that are seemingly unrelated to the main narrative eventually make sense. What saves "The Optimist's Daughter," in the end, is both its ability to haunt the reader and Welty's sure-handed understanding of humanity.

If you have long wondered what the fuss about Eudora Welty is all about, read THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, the 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winner for fiction. This is no peripheral achievement but the heart of the Welty experience. As you begin reading it, you would describe it as a spare, quiet character study. By the time you finish it--the prose is sleek and straightforward, you glide through it--you are flipping back, realizing the profundities it has kicked up all the way through, hoping you did not miss anything. It is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, fortysomething widow, who has flown back to the south from her career life in Chicago to be at her father's side as he copes with a medical emergency. It is obvious that she has come because the trophy wife/stepmother, Fay, is not considered up to the task by anyone else's standards. The first part of the novel ends with the judge's death; the second part moves back into the Mississippi house where Laurel grew up for her father's funeral. Here Welty introduces the town folk who hold her father and late mother in high esteem, who regard Fay as a white trash outsider nuisance. Fay reminds everyone that she gets all the property, everything they all view as belonging to the deceased parents and the grown daughter. The first two parts could easily translate to the screen or stage; the last two would be more difficult because Welty turns inward, helping Laurel sort out memory, loss, and what it spells for her future. The power of the book lies in how it twists and turns through the four characters--Laurel, her parents, and Fay--moving around the tensions between them until a full sense of the truth is located. What you first know about Laurel and Fay will be challenged. Neither is simple, nor is the story.

The sentence from this book that best describes it is: "Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams." What a beautiful piece of writing! I am so thankful for growing older and maturing. Having done so, this book can truly be enjoyed. It is about maturing, deepening, remembering, and honoring. It is about relationship with the persons in one's life, with the past and with the future. Obtrusively thrust in the middle of all this is Fay and the Chisom family, representing all the possible ugliness, crassness, uncaring and unfeeling meanness of today's world.

I could write that there is little that happens in this book...on the surface, but as in all truly rich experiences, one has to go deeper and reflect to see the richness. After slowly enjoying the first 160 pages or so, the last 10 pages explode in complexity and interaction and meaning. Those pages comprise one of the finest endings to a novel that I have read.

In a departure from his usual mystery/legal/police thriller, Greg Iles mixes science fiction with a chilling story set in his native Natchez, with some familiar supporting characters. A word of warning--you need to suspend belief and not expect everything to add up, because this is paranormal fiction.

John Waters is a successful geologist oilman who happens to see a woman at a soccer game who reminds him of a former lover. This coincidence is eerie because the woman, Mallory Candler, is dead, strangled and raped years before in New Orleans. He is thrown for a loop when the woman, Eve Sumner, calls him and tells him that she is Mallory. Waters, whose wife has been traumatized by a dead child and unwilling to have sex, succumbs to the siren call of Eve/Mallory and has a torrid two week affair with her. After a night of sex with her in a hotel room, Waters blacks out and awakes to find Eve strangled--just like Mallory.

Waters turns to his old friend Penn Cage, novelist and former DA (and lead character of Iles' Quiet Game, also mentioned in the book) for legal advice. Cage suspects some conspiracy to frame waters and begins to look into his partner, Cole, heavily into gambling debts and his wife Ivy who might blame Waters for the stillbirth.

What other enemies has Waters made? Will the police find out about his secret trysts with Eve and arrest him?

The plot takes you into unsuspected directions, with suspense building all the while.

I am a Greg Iles fan and I only gave this entertaining book three stars because I prefer a more factual/logical plot to the science fiction elements here. While it was chilling, it was not frightening. It was a highly entertaining read that I enjoyed during a day at the beach.

Greg Iles has a storytelling knack that is almost startling in its intensity. Every one of his books is worth reading as a vivid, compelling story.

In Sleep No More he creates a story of the supernatural worthy of Stephen King. It is an eerie story of young love, death, a family, and threats almost beyond imagining. It is a murder mystery, a love story, and an account that at times seems to verge on insanity. At every page you will find yourself drawn deeper and deeper into the plot and more and more curious about how it will end. The plotting for the last third of the book continues to build in intensity until you can't put it down until you finish.

I have to admit that I had no idea how the conflict would be resolved and found the conclusion very satisfying but the story very troubling. If the supernatural frightens you, this book may be too much. On the other hand if it intrigues you, then you should rush down to your bookstore and buy Sleep No More. If you just like interesting personalities and fascinating stories, anything by Greg Iles is worth reading. This book continues that high standard.

No wonder no less a literary personage than Mr Stephen King, master of the maccabre, himself praised this new novel by Greg Iles. The author has yet again expanded his scope in writing by slightly detouring around his usually thrilling subject matter into a slightly more ethereal world.
Why does the attractive Eve Sumner whisper soon to Oil geologist John Waters at a soccor game? This is a question Waters asked himself at the start of the tale, then spends much effort and sanity trying to convince others of the answer.
Once again Iles turns up the suspense and tension in his latest thriller, while at the same time causing the reader to think and ask some curious questions about what we believe of the afterlife, the nature of true love and sanity. Despite being slightly different from his previous works in tone I think Mr. Iles has maintained the thrill factor very well in this latest offering, and give him credit for having the courage to write a slightly different story than the kind his readers and fans have grown used to. I felt lumps in my throat in parts due to the high level of paranoia he invokes throughout Sleep No More. A very good title for horror fans that may not normally consider reading Iles and for thriller fans that expect more than typical thrills in their fiction.

This book had incredible potential right from the beginning and in many ways, this potential was fulfilled. However, as Faulkner got further entrenched in his stream of consciousness technique and he continued to reiterate the significance of the events on what essentailly is a 24-36 hour period, I began to come to the conclusion that this must have started off as a short story and was extended strictly to satisfy elements of style and to send a message to the rest of the country (let The South solve its own Civil Rights problem). I have previously successfully navigated the stream of consciousness style in such books as Absalom Absalom! and found that in the retelling of a 50 year saga it was very effective. Here however, it seems to get in the way and serves only to extend a basic (but interesting) storyline from an evening read, to an extended read. I recommend it for the Faulkner fan since it was one of his rare commercial successes, but the Faulkner novice may be better off with easier books such as The Unvanquished or even for that matter Light in August.

No it's not one of Faulkner's "big four" (the classics "The Sound and the Fury," "As I Lay Dying," "Light in August" and "Absalom! Absalom!"), but "Intruder in the Dust" is certainly in his next tier of top novels, and is the one book that can fly in the face of the "he never wrote anything great after World War II" way of thinking. I enjoyed this book immensely. Yes, the sentences tend to be extremely long and the book is slow to get going, but find Faulkner's rhythm and stick with the story; you'll be glad you did. As always, the highlight is Faulkner's beautiful use of language, which always towers over whatever story he's writing and whatever flaws you may stumble upon along the way. This story of a black man wrongly accused of murder doesn't always go where you think it will or even where you want it to, but somehow it works brilliantly. Faulkner throws in his take (apparently) on how the South should handle civil rights on its own -- not really necessary to include and a small flaw in the book, I think. But stick with it, get drunk on the prose and enjoy an underappreciated work from a master. This relatively short book will be over too soon.

This novel has a traditional detective story plot and a conventional attitude about race relations (although it was progressive for the South in the late 40s). After that, all bets are off. The style is like a thicket, but that's because Faulkner puts you into the head of a confused boy caught up in events beyond his control. Chick Mallison is white, and his friend Aleck Sander is black (Aleck Sander doesn't know his name isn't two words, because he can't read or write). The paired adult characters of equivalent race are Chick's uncle, Gavin Stevens, a lawyer, who defends Lucas Beauchamp (pronounced "Beecham"), a black tenant farmer accused of a murder he didn't commit by the people who did it. They know that in a prejudiced society, white people are likely to believe a black man is guilty, so they try to palm it off on him. Lucas is a rather severe character who often doesn't seem to appreciate the help he's getting (part of the plot involves trying to prevent the citizens from pulling him out of jail and lynching him), but he's a marvelous character and something of a father figure to Chick by the end of the book. Reading the book is a bit of a chore at first, but I got through it in high school years ago, and am reading it now for the third time. If you want some help getting into the book, you might try a "Masterplots" description of it or a reader's guide to Faulkner (there are several around). You might also look for the 1949 film based on the book, which was filmed in Faulkner's home town of Oxford, Mississippi, with local citizens as extras, and with the great Juano Hernandez playing Lucas.

Fay walks a lot. That's what Fay does. She walks and lights cigarettes. Fay drinks beer and tosses empty cans. And then she walks some more. On a road. And this is how Larry Brown writes about Fay. Walking. On a road. Walking. A lot. Despite this overwrought attempt at Hemingway simplicity, Fay is still an exceptional novel. The style is forgotten quickly as the plot unravels in seedy, rural Mississippi. Larry Brown's book is a quick read that sways from one side of a country road to the other - blindly speeding and turning when least expected. It's an engaging story of starting over, coming of age and sexual discovery. Fay Jones is a determined, endearing girl who wants a better life. She walks away from paternal abuse and searches for anything better. She is a backwoods teenager unaware of her feminine beauty, and she discovers her sexual appeal the hard way. It's a country mouse goes to the city and finds Larry Flynt kind of tale - a classic bildungsroman with a touch of Penthouse Forum. Using language and landscape, Larry Brown effectively paints the South in which Fay travels. His characters are well developed, and their rural southern dialect is natural and unstrained. Brown doesn't exaggerate southern conversation - a hurdle many authors can't clear. His southern scenery is also accurate, with its kudzu jungles, high humidity and shrimp trawlers. The song of salt air blowing through sailboat rigging accompanies seabirds' cries and early-morning dock sounds. It's Shem Creek in Biloxi. All you need is boiled peanuts. If anything in Fay is contrived, however, it's the non-stop coffee, beer and cigarettes - there's always one or the other in everyone's hand. Nearly every page has a pot brewing, a beer opening or cigarettes burning. It's a relief when the hash pipes appear, just for a change of pace.

Fay is a mixture of Deliverance, On the Road and Rabbit, Run - a backwoods journey of an everyman heroine, who endures rape, murder and lost love. A story filled with substance abuse and altered states, Fay captures southern society's underbelly in a provocative and heartfelt way. Trailers, bars and old houses fill Larry Brown's Mississippi, which overflows with cops, strippers and criminals. Overall, Fay is a straightforward, compelling book. Subplots are sparse, but the central story is engaging entertainment. It has appealing characters and a rapid rhythm. Fay Jones is a character to root for, and Fay is a novel worth reading. What else would you expect from a Chapel Hill publishing company founded by a Charleston native? For further information, visit www.algonquin.com and for more of the Jones clan, read Larry Brown's prequel, Joe.

In just a few books, Larry Brown has proven himself to be a master storyteller. Hopefully, his critical recognition will spread to a greater popular acclaim with Fay, another of his wonderful novels of the South.

Brown is equally adept at stark, haunting descriptions of the beautiful desolation his characters inhabit, and the sudden, shocking violence they often confront. Much like Cormac McCarthy, another of my favorite writers, Brown's scenes of violence are almost poetic in description, gorgeously composed but shocking to the core. And, also like McCarthy, his characters seem always to be on the edge of redemption when one bad choice, one wrong turn, pulls them back under.

Fay is a fantastic character, one of the better female characters ever written by a man, and she will make you feel hope and despair for her as she struggles to make a life for herself in a harsh, strange world, but keeps sliding into pitfalls created by her own naivete and her ignorance of the havoc her beauty causes.

Read this book, and don't forget to read Joe as well, the novel in which her character was first introduced.

Nobody writes about rednecks and Southern rogues better than Larry Brown. In this big, ambitious book he charts a new variant on previous work, giving the reader a sprawling tale of the down-and-out on the Gulf Coast which focuses primarily on a female. There are plenty of the 'good ole boys' that one expects of Brown in ths picaresque tale, but it is Fay's story. Naturally beautiful and sexy, seventeen year old Fay is also dumber than a sack of nails and about as passive. She comes by her ignorance honestly, since she has no real education and has been raised in abject poverty in a family of migrant workers. Walking away from a life she hates and fears into a world she knows nothing about, she becomes a lightning rod for trouble. Mostly man trouble. From initial encounters with a truckload of drunken young men she progresses through a series of 'adventures' that quickly become entangled in one another. By the end of the story there is a trail of wreckage from Oxford to Gulf Shores that includes damaged and dead bodies, destroyed lives and lost hope.

Fay is a complex character and her story, while disturbing, rings true. There is tragedy here but there is also a good deal of simple humanity. Fay can be a tough lady when she has to be, but she has a fundamental sweet side that makes her an easy mark. The reader keeps wanting to scream, "NO, don't do it" - knowing full well that she will, will then regret it and have no idea how to make it OK. True life.

I enjoyed this book as much as anything I have read in ages. It isn't a pleasant book, but characters like Aaron and his brother, though ugly, are quite real. One of the things I liked best about this novel was Brown's choice to shift the point of view from player to player, so that we see the story from the eyes of many characters as it unfolds.

Anyone wanting a honest, tough, uncompromising look at humans on the edge should read this book. I highly recommend it.