REVIEW 'The Rabbit Factory' proves Larry Brown masters short story

It's a compelling tale that intertwines six stories.
By JEFF KUNERTH
ORLANDO SENTINEL
"The Rabbit Factory," by Larry Brown (The Free Press, $25).
"The Rabbit Factory" is Larry Brown's fifth novel, but it reminds you what a great short-story writer Brown is. The book tells six stories at once, weaving back and forth as the novel unfolds.
Mere happenstance -- and sometimes the Peabody Hotel lounge in Memphis, Tenn. -- is all that connects the characters. In essence, the book is six short stories chopped into pieces and sewn back together in alternating order.
The characters
We have Arthur, nearing 70; Helen, his oversexed 50-year-old wife; and Eric, the teenage runaway who befriends them both.
We have Anjalee, a sad but sympathetic hooker, who has no trouble attracting the wrong kind of man -- including police officers. Anjalee is a literary first cousin to Fay, the once-innocent heroine turned stripper in Brown's novel of the same name.
We have Wayne Stubbock, a naive and sometimes punch-drunk sailor, who falls in love with Anjalee before leaving on a ship headed for a close encounter with a doomed whale.
We have the one-legged Miss Muffett, a housesitter lonely for love and outwitted by a dog.
We have Domino D'Alamo, an ex-con butcher and small-time drug runner whose desire for road-kill whitetail deer leads him to murder and a vengeful cop named Rico.
And lastly, we have Ole Miss Prof Merlot Jones and black police officer Penelope, whose red-hot love affair hinges on her acceptance of the secret that lives inside his house.
Stories intertwine
The stories intertwine but never converge. It's their conclusions, however, that prove Larry Brown is the master of the short-story ending. He doesn't tie everything up in a neat bow at the end, but he also doesn't leave the reader wondering what was the point of the story. Brown doesn't write slice-of-life stories. He writes real-life stories that have beginnings, middles and ends.
And those endings are what make a Larry Brown story so good. Each ends with just the right touch -- a bit of humor, a little irony, a touch of tenderness, a hint of sadness.
Along the way, he takes the reader on a fantastic, sometimes funny, ride through the streets, strip joints and bars of Memphis, and the dark back roads of Mississippi. Brown's characters smoke pot, drink whiskey and listen to Patsy Cline, Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt. Always searching for something better, they too often settle for something less. Their stories are about love and loss, and the sexual ache of the unsatisfied.
Mating game
The book takes its title from the rabbit-breeding enterprise run by Eric and his brutish father before the boy runs away to save the life of a reformed pit bull named Jada Pinkett. But it could also refer to the sexual proclivities of the book's characters, who mate more than make love and suffer for failing to understand the difference.
In the end, all the separate stories add up to a compelling tale of ordinary men and women trying to find each other through the smoke, booze and lust.
"The Rabbit Factory" marks the point where Larry Brown the novelist caught up with Larry Brown the short-story writer.