Title: Dirty Work
Author: Larry Brown
First published January 8, 1989
247 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 9781565125636 (ISBN10: 1565125630)
Rating: 4.17
Overview
Riveting and heart-wrenching, Dirty Work tells the tale of two Mississippi natives, a black man and a white man, who have never met before. Both fought for their country in Vietnam, and both were left with devastating injuries.
Now, after two decades, they find themselves lying side by side in a VA hospital. Through a single day and night, Walter James and Braiden Chaney share stories of their past, their loves, and their hopes for the future.
In Brown’s signature style, Dirty Work takes an unflinching look at the brutal realities of war and the power of human connection in the face of adversity.
About the Author
Larry Brown, a renowned American writer, was born and lived in Oxford, Mississippi. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction and was a high school graduate who did not pursue college initially.
Later, he took a creative writing class from the famous novelist Ellen Douglas. Brown served in the United States Marine Corps for two years before he returned to Oxford and worked at a small stove company.
He then joined the city fire department and started writing in his free time while serving as a firefighter in 1980.
Brown was a recipient of various awards for his exceptional work. He won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction and was the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction, which he won for his novels Joe and Father and Son.
He also received the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, which granted him $35,000 annually for three years to write. In 2000, he was granted a Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts by the State of Mississippi.
Brown taught as a writer-in-residence in the creative writing program at the University of Mississippi for a semester, temporarily taking over the position held by his friend Barry Hannah. He also served as visiting writer at the University of Montana in Missoula and taught briefly at other colleges throughout the United States.
Brown passed away due to an apparent heart attack at his home in the Yocona community, near Oxford, in November 2004.
Editoral Review
Dirty Work, by the late Larry Brown, is a haunting novel that explores themes of grief, redemption, and the harsh realities of life in the rural South. First published in 1989, the novel has gained a cult following among fans of Southern Gothic fiction and is widely regarded as one of Brown’s finest works.
Brown, who grew up poor and spent most of his life working blue-collar jobs, brings a gritty realism to his writing that is both raw and poetic. His prose is spare and unflinching, capturing the stark beauty and brutality of the Mississippi Delta with an unerring eye for detail and a deep empathy for his characters.
Dirty Work tells the story of two brothers, Walter and Roscoe, who are struggling to come to terms with the death of their father and the legacy of violence and bigotry that he left behind. Walter, the older brother and the novel’s narrator, is a Vietnam vet who has returned home to take care of the family farm.
Roscoe, on the other hand, has become a law enforcement officer and is tasked with investigating a brutal crime that has shaken the community. As the novel unfolds, Brown weaves together the stories of these two brothers, exploring their complex relationship and the forces that have shaped them.
Along the way, he introduces a cast of unforgettable characters, from a hard-drinking blues musician to a young prostitute with a tragic past. What makes Dirty Work such a powerful novel is Brown’s ability to humanize his characters, even as they struggle with their darkest impulses.
He doesn’t shy away from the ugly realities of racism and poverty, but he never loses sight of the humanity of his characters, and he infuses their stories with a sense of grace and compassion. At times, the novel can be difficult to read, as Brown doesn’t shy away from graphic violence or explicit sexual content.
But these moments are never gratuitous; rather, they serve to underscore the harshness of the characters’ lives and the challenges they face. If the novel has any flaws, it’s that the pacing can be slow at times, and some readers may find the ending unsatisfying.
But these minor quibbles are far outweighed by Brown’s powerful writing, which is both elegiac and unsentimental. Overall, Dirty Work is a masterful novel that deserves to be read and discussed today, as the United States continues to grapple with questions of race, class, and identity.
It’s not an easy book, but it’s an important one, and it will stay with readers long after they finish the final page. Rating: 4.5/5
