Larry Brown
Paperback | Pages: 247 pages Rating: 4.19 | 1595 Users | 160 Reviews
Itemize About Books Dirty Work
| Title | : | Dirty Work |
| Author | : | Larry Brown |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 247 pages |
| Published | : | March 30th 2007 by Algonquin Books |
| Categories | : | Fiction. War. American. Southern. Gothic. Southern Gothic |
Rendition Conducive To Books Dirty Work
Dirty Work is the story of two men, strangers—one white, the other black. Both were born and raised in Mississippi. Both fought in Vietnam. Both were gravely wounded. Now, twenty-two years later, the two men lie in adjacent beds in a VA hospital.Over the course of a day and a night, Walter James and Braiden Chaney talk of memories, of passions, of fate.With great vision, humor, and courage, Brown writes mostly about love in a story about the waste of war.
Present Books During Dirty Work
| ISBN: | 1565125630 (ISBN13: 9781565125636) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating About Books Dirty Work
Ratings: 4.19 From 1595 Users | 160 ReviewsAssess About Books Dirty Work
Sad and well written. Personality dominates. Others have said it better than I could. The more modern the war, the more survivors live with worse and worse physical handicaps.This is an unusual format that, at times, reads like separate monologues. It reminded me a little of Stephen King's Delores Claiborne, not the story itself, but the mode of storytelling.The tragic tale of two American vets who have both been scarred emotionally and physically, Dirty Work is brutally honest, yet beautifully written. At the end of the edition I read, there is an interview with Brown, who has since passed away. He is speaking to some of his critics, and I think the excerpt below
"You look in somebodys eyes, then kill him, you remember them eyes. You remember that you was the last thing he seen." The horrific aftermath of the Vietnam War in both the minds and bodies of men really struck home in Dirty Work, my introduction to author Larry Brown. Its been twenty-two years since the war, but to Walter and Braiden, two strangers meeting for the first time in a Mississippi VA hospital, the battle wounds and mental trauma are far from healed. As they begin to swap stories
Two Vietnam vets in a ward, many years after the war. One with no limbs. One with a blown apart face. They're unlikely friends, placed next to each other on a long night of getting wasted, smoking weed, telling literal war stories and stories from their sorrowful past of growing up poor and without options in rural Mississippi. The writing is occasionally transcendent but in the same way you might be lifted off a barstool and taken on a flight around the ceiling of a tavern. Dirty Work is a book
This book leaves you with flashbacks: wet, dying in a cold, wet field. Helpless. The sound of choppers. Lying in a hospital bed, helpless. No way out. Perpetual hell. Drowning, passed out. Cold. Wet. Nothing warm or soft or dry anywhere. Helpless.Two vets share a room in a VA Hospital. They talk. They think. Larry Brown's prose is more like poetry and as free as dreams. Yet there is no problem following it, and I can easily imagine this being played on stage by actors without changing a thing
Full review to follow.
0 Comments