cover image Big Bad Love

Big Bad Love

Larry Brown. Vintage Books USA, $15 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-679-73491-8

Womanizing, heavy-drinking, often desperate backwoods loners inhabit this virtuoso collection of short stories. According to PW , ``A casual glance suggests invasion of Raymond Carver territory, but Brown stakes out his own turf by dint of his integrity and wit; his heroes are savants of the down-and-out set, harrowingly aware of their own limitations without abandoning hope of salvation.'' (Oct.)