Rating: 
Summary: A fun ride!
Review: Based on Fay and earlier works, I knew Brown's "The Rabbit Factory" would be entertaining, and it certainly did NOT disappoint! A wonderful collection of quirky characters and situations. Just great white trash writing, not to be missed!
Rating:
Summary: A fun ride!
Review: Based on Fay and earlier works, I knew Brown's "The Rabbit Factory" would be entertaining, and it certainly did NOT disappoint! A wonderful collection of quirky characters and situations. Just great white trash writing, not to be missed!
Rating:
Summary: Losers, Boozers, and Dogs
Review: Frankie is a small-time hit-man for the mob. Helen is a young wife with too much libido married to Arthur who doesn't have enough. Mr. Hamburger is a mobster. Anjalee is a stunningly beautiful hooker. Jada Pinkett is an old broken down pit bull who has had a late-life ephiphany and now tries to help other animals. Eric is a teen-aged boy who works at the pet store, a young man with the only conscience in the book. All these and many other characters, like refugees from Winesburg, Ohio, seem to blunder through life, drinking their way toward disaster.As noted by another reviewer, the book is more like a collection of intertwining short stories than a novel. There is no attempt to bring all the stories or the characters together. The unifying element is the terrain, Memphis and northern Mississippi. The epicenter of the story is the bar at the Peabody hotel, where the characters find themselves for their first drinks of the evening. Author Larry Brown is a skilled writer and is able to keep all these characters and their sad stories moving at a brisk pace. Unfortunately most of the characters are not only unlikeable but also not quite believable. They spend far too much time drinking, drugging and bemoaning their sad fates; their attempts to rise out of the muck are feeble at best. It is hard for the reader to empathize with them as they consistently do what they know is wrong and their lives progressively fall apart. I'm glad I read this book, but I was also glad when it was over. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile read
Review: I hate to say it, but this Brown work wasn't as satisfying as the other novel's I've read, but still worth the time. More of a compilation of short-stories, Brown walks you through the lives of Domino - a recently released convict with a butcher's job and a plan, Miss Muffett - a disabled housekeeper, both of whom are employed by Mr. Hamburger - a Chicago derived mobster. Domino can't seem to get trouble out of his hair as aids in the joining of Merlot and Penelope, the victim and the savior. Also, Arthur - the 70 year old husband of a younger Helen who is driven to infidelity and frustrated by Arthur's inability to "get it up". Eric, a kind-hearted young pet-shop employee who runs away from home to save the life of his old pit-bull Jada Pinkett who is too old to fight or breed is invited into their home and put to the test by Helen's overwhelming [physical] presence. Too, there's Anjalee - a driven [lady of the night] who needs a way out, and Wayne - mesmerized by her after receiving her services and dead set on finding her again regardless of his enlistment with the US Navy. This book is packed with spinning lives as real as if you were living in each characters shoes. In my opinion, it stayed pretty luke-warm, but a good read none the less.
Rating:
Summary: dark deep look at humanity
Review: In the Memphis area, septuagenarian Arthur worries that his age and impotency will cost him his beautiful younger spouse, Helen. He looks into ways to keep her satiated but has good reason to believe in his nightmare because Helen attempts to seduce pet shop worker teenage Eric, who Arthur treats like his son. However, the lad fled the abuse of his father and his family's rabbit factory so struggles to relate to people with his best friend being Jada Pickett the pit bull.
Anjalee the prostitute also is an abuse victim survivor, but surprisingly has a devoted follower sailor Wayne. Meanwhile Domino's illegal drug business is hampered by his murdering boss Mr. Hamburger, who sells meat to a lion owner. The cops remain interested in Domino's trafficking, making meatballs out of Mr. Hamburger, and Anjalee's wares. All will interact to a Bacon degree caused in some ways by fate near the Mississippi in a place where a lion, a whale, Jada, Mr. Hamburger's "guard dog" and others seem saner than these human zanies.
THE RABBIT FACTORY is a weird but interesting character study that looks deep into the interactions of people trying to endure life; some of the cast blames fate and others, but never themselves for their predicament. The story line rotates the third person narrative amongst the ensemble, which adds to increased understanding of the motives of several of the players, but makes it a bit difficult to follow the action especially since stereotypes are stood on their heads in an allegorical way. Readers who appreciate a dark deep look at humanity will want to follow the antics of those destined to visit THE RABBIT FACTORY.
Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Brown Hits Another Home-Run
Review: In The Rabbit Factory, Mississippi writer Larry Brown does something different--this time, he lets humor take center stage. After the darkness of his other books (which were always ripe with gallows humor anyway), Rabbit Factory is a more-than-pleasant surprise. Not that everything is all chipper for his new cast of characters. Hardly. But the absudity of their situations is presented with a bit of a lighter tone this time around. Even a dog gets a few chapters to itself, and they are hilarious. The narrative moves much faster here as well--kind of like an Elmore Leonard tale. If you thought Brown's last couple of novels were a bit too heavy, give this one a shot. You won't be disappointed. The Rabbit Factory should deservedly earn Brown a legion of new fans--and one can sense a great movie just up the road apiece.
Rating: 
Summary: Rabbits are cute. This is not
Review: Larry Brown's south is the stereotypical Southern White Trash Redneck and his characters aren't the least bit likeable. The "hero" worries about his ability to satisfy his wife, but she's such a tramp the reader wonders why. The abuse victim acts out of character for someone who's been so severely violated, and that's just one of the flaws. Don't waste your time.
Rating:
Summary: A Deep South "Magnolia," with a couple cocktails
Review: Like "Magnolia" or "Nashville," this is a mosaic about a group of loosely connected characters, most of whom don't realize their relationships to one another. Domino, for example, is an ex-con who makes deliveries for a gangster named Mr. Hamburger; Hamburger employs Frankie, a button man who keeps hooker Anjalee as his on-hold skeezer; elderly Arthur meets both Anjalee and Frankie as he worries about his straying wife, Helen, who longs for pet shop clerk Eric; Eric was once acquainted with a one-armed man named Nub who recently hooked up with Miss Muffet, a woman who looks after a demonic dog for Mr. Hamburger, and so on.... It took me a while to get into the book -- it takes some time to get acclimated to all the different characters and you've got to get used the way Brown jumps from place to place and person to person. But once that's out of the way, the stories speed by. Brown is a master at getting you hooked into one story, then shifting to another one that gradually becomes just as engrossing. He also creates characters that are deeply flawed but surprisingly sympathetic: case in point -- Domino D'Alamo, a dope-dealing, cop-killing no good who will stop at nothing to accomplish his goal (basically "deliver the weed and get paid.") Despite his Tuco-esque flaws, I kept catching myself rooting for him. And in his last scene, when his ridiculous but terrible fate is revealed, I genuinely felt sad. The usual Brown trademarks are here -- perfectly crafted scenes that look deceptively easy; vivid depictions of men and women and land and violent activity; Brown's obsessions with and depictions of drinking, smoking, money, sex and food. And yet the book also finds the author going in a few different directions, as well, writing about people and places that don't ordinarily wind up in his fiction. The book isn't perfect. It's a little indulgent and some strands feel incomplete; some of the characters fare better than others -- I never really got too interested in the adventures of college professor Merlot and his law enforcement squeeze Penelope, and I wondered if it was really necessary for Anjalee *and* Helen *and* Miss Muffet to be such man-hunting barflies. But overall, it's a series of compelling stories and it's good to be back with Brown's kooky brokenhearts and badasses, and to see a great writer branching off into new territories -- whom among his fans would've thought a whale would enter into one of his tales?
Rating:
Summary: Larry Brown Serves Up Rabbit (with a side of mash potatoes)
Review: The only thing Brown left out of this novel is a cooler full of beer in the trunk. Of course, all the other Brown-isms are there, all those things we have loved from him over the years: blood, booze, sex, and more booze. The novel will not disappoint rabid Brown fans, but it might take a while to get used to the characters weaving in and out of the narrative. A fun read.
Rating:
Summary: Existentialism, with a Southern accent
Review: The title sets the tone: Rabbits are bread as cute pets; but once they reach a "certain age", they become unsaleable. Mr. Studebaker, owner of the pet store, doesn't know what to do with these "older" rabbits. Eric--a homeless employee, looking for a friend after having run away from his abusive father--knows just what to do--kill them and freeze them for meat. How does he know? Because his father enfenced a 7 acre field, and bred rabbits for hunting. The rabbit factory. In a series of interlocking stories, Larry Brown artfully weaves together the lives of several characters, all inhabiting (all temporarily) Memphis. None have had good luck recently, and only Arthur--a former oil tycoon, now 70, in retirement, facing impotency, and trying to hold on to his 40 year old wife--seems to have ever had any. A mobster from Chicago has his privates mangled by a post hole digger; his one legged maid has her leg stolen in her battle with the family poodle; a good looking hooker looses two sugar daddy's, and is then arrested for assaulting an abusive nurse working at an old folk's home; a navy man, whose ship kills a whale, and who then suffers brain damage in an unofficial boxing match; and an ex-con, who really, really tries to go straight, but suffers a series of comic mishaps that turn him into first a murderer, and then food for lions (just in case the Rabbit factory image hasn't sunk in yet). At the end, two of the plot lines remain unresolved. Will Helen stop drinking and running around and return to Arthur, who (probably) still loves her? Will the beautiful hooker stay with the brain damaged boxing naval man? Can anyone ever find happiness? Or are we all, including authors who labor long over a book only to have it read and then discarded, simply grist for some cosmic rabbit factory we call existence. More readable than Waiting for Godot, and far more entertaining--but the point seems the same--there is no point.
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