The Rabbit Factory by Larry Brown
This is the first book I have read of Larry Brown’s after a long conversation I had with my friend John about him at the record store several months previous. According to him, this is his favorite book by Larry Brown.
The book as a whole came off like a Coen Brothers film does (and a couple of scenes in particular really reminded me of the more stark and suspenseful scenes from Fargo). Basically, one of the major premises of the plots in some of their films and with some of these characters is just that they make really stupid decisions. With each new poorly thought out choice, they drive themselves deeper and deeper into trouble. You just know it can only end one way. Yet, there are other characters that Brown brings a bit of redemption too as in the character of Arthur who really just wants to please his wife and have a little company while watching his favorite old Westerns. Or the character of Anjalee who really just wants to find a sugar daddy to give her life a little stability.
I should mention, or warn whoever might read this, that there was also a bit in the book reminding me of that Ray Bradbury short story, “The Veldt” in the sense of the overbearing lions that take over sections of the story and become a grim reminder and metaphor for the way in which our whole society does not value life. The meat of the lions is, gruesomely put, human flesh arising from basically what appears to be some sort of underground mafia in the south with connections to Chicago. The “meat” is then packaged to be fed to the lions. However, a couple of times it is unknowingly consumed by other humans. Larry Brown doesn’t belabor this point but it’s there. Subtle as it might seem, there’s definitely a reason for it.
Now, I’m not really the type of person that likes to read about murdering, prostitution, gambling, cannibalism occurring in the deep south. In fact, I don’t even like suspense. But there’s something special in the writing here in the ways that the characters are explored and in the philisophical nature, even at the moment of a gruesome death, in which their thoughts turn. So, in some ways, I would say that the book is about characters with real life problems, some of whom could be thought of as another character in a different life stage.
My main flaw with this novel, even though I found that many of the characters brought a great deal of depth to the text, was that some of the beginning characters are dropped almost inconsequentially. There is one character who you think will end up being one of the major characters, while living, of the book and he dies rather early on. The reader also expects to see more of Mr. Hamburger who is the leader of this mafia-like criminal underground but we learn more about his dog and his housekeeper than we do about him. I also thought the characters could have been connected more than they were. Each character really has something to hide and caught up in a rabbit factory all of their own but there is no point in which they all actually meet up in the book. It might just be a personal preference but I would have liked to see more of that occur.
All in all, there’s some interesting depth here that Brown explores in the deep dark south of human nature. You can’t help but keep reading even at its grimmest moments.