Dirty Work

Written by Larry Brown

Narrated by Ed Sala and Peter Francis James

This gripping novel is not only one of the best books written about Vietnam; it is also one of the most powerful anti-war novels in American literature. Walter James has no face. Braiden Chaney has no arms or legs. They lost them 22 years ago, in Vietnam. Now, in the course of one long night in a V.A. hospital, these two soldiers-one black, the other white-reveal how they came to be where they are and what they can only hope to become.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 6, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440799655

Reviews for Dirty Work

[datrappert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pretty remarkable and impossible to do justice to in a short review. On the one hand, this book is the most extreme type of melodrama, and the two lead characters are a lot more intelligent and articulate than you would expect, but that lets Brown tell his harrowing story of memories, duty, fate, love, and death in a voice that never falters. And may never leave you. Perhaps not quite as well written as Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried--but in its depiction of the toll of war on two men, even more effective.

[polaris4_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Difficult to find words to express how much this short novel moved me...Larry Brown has a way with his writing that takes you right under the skin of his characters. They are so vivid and believable. Dirty Work's two main protagonists are both physically and mentally scarred Vietnam veterans who share adjoining beds in a VA hospital 22 years after their war. Both Mississippians, limbless Braiden is black and faceless Walter is white. Both are from poor and troubled backgrounds. They find rare solace in their ability to confide in each other, something that their lives have usually been barred from.The book is entirely written in the first person with short, punchy, and more or less alternate chapters in the voice of each man - something that I very quickly adjusted to after a tricky opening dozen or so pages... This book is very powerful and deeply affecting, and I'm pretty sure I will return to it again. The subject it addresses is as relevant today as it ever was - "I know where you been, man. I've decided it's all the same. it's just the places and the reasons that change. Or maybe just the enemy. Hell. Let's open us another beer."

[jroulette_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A modern day masterpiece. Think Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and you'd be in the ballpark. I believe this and Joe are Brown's greatest novels. This hooked me for life.

[snat_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those books that I use to size up other people. If you've read Dirty Work and you didn't love it, I don't want to know you. This was the first Larry Brown book that I ever read and, after re-reading it, it is still as powerful and haunting the second time around. The novel focuses on two Vietnam veterans in the VA hospital two decades after the war has ended. Braiden, a black quadraplegic, has spent this entire time in the hospital and his imagination is his only means of escape. When Walter arrives under mysterious circumstances, Braiden thinks he's found his salvation. Walter's face was horribly mutilated and shell fragments lodged in his brain cause him to have uncontrollable "blackouts" from which he awakens with no memory. As these two men talk about their lives as they were and as they are and as they revisit the painful landscape of Vietnam, Brown reveals how the war took much more from them than their bodies. The damage is emotional, spiritual, and mental (as Braiden says at one point, "It do something to you to kill another person. It ain't no dog lying there. Somebody. A person, talk like you, eat like you, got a mind like you. Got a soul like you . . . You look in somebody's eyes, then kill him, you remember them eyes. You remember that you was the last thing he seen.") The novel also reflects how it was the poor and, in particular, the black soldiers who were asked to give the most and expect nothing in return--not even valid reasons for fighting. Brown's writing is simple, direct, and often bitingly funny when you least expect it. He knew how to capture the cadences and culture of working class Americans always one paycheck away from the brink of poverty and he always did so with the utmost respect, never denegrating or lessening their value to American society. When Brown died, we lost one of the finest writers of the American South and this novel is a testament to his gifts.