GRIT-LIT REDUX

Since his death in 2004, Larry Brown hasn’t enjoyed the same posthumous notoriety as other tough-guy literary figures, like Raymond Carver. Tiny Love: The Complete Stories of Larry Brown aims to correct that. In addition to the full text of Brown’s two previously published short-story collections, the anthology contains seven new tales that are rife with the loose morals that Brown encountered when he was still fighting fires in rural Mississippi. Drawn in gritty, deceptively simple prose, his characters drink too much, smoke too much, and f lout the law when they can. But Brown proves that the coarsest material can produce the most affecting art. —J.R.S.