The Best Revenge: Short Stories (Hardscrabble Books-Fiction of New England) [Paperback]

Rebecca Rule (Author)

Book Description

Series: Hardscrabble Books-Fiction of New England | Publication Date: April 1, 2004

In nineteen finely honed, deftly realized short stories, Rebecca Rule crafts with gentle wit and striking clarity a conglomeration of sometimes ragtag but always appealing small-town denizens, each of whom squares off against a nemesis of a singular sort. With an eye for the signature detail, an ear for the rhythms of regional speech, and a strong feel for the nuances of rural culture, Rule maintains a fine balance between humor and pathos that prompted National Book Award winner Thomas Williams to comment, "Cold honesty gleams from every careful sentence."

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Rule captures the essence of small-town New England life as she paints with a sure hand the fallings-out and friendships, the trials and triumphs of the New England microcosm. In "Yankee Curse," elderly Miranda knits placidly at a town meeting, pondering an amazing string of unspoken invective against an enemy but stopping short at "a curse she would never levy, not even on Mort Wallace: to live too long." In "Minna Runs for Selectman," a middle-aged woman's battlefield is "the strange, incestuous politics of this eccentric little town" but her real opponent is her own insecurity. In "Jim's Boat" a young couple wages a silent struggle over priorities in their marriage; in "Fishing with George" a small girl worries that "there's a hole in our family that gets bigger every time" her parents argue; and in the title story a mother copes with a hated neighbor through a sculpture that "makes her laugh the kind of laugh that doesn't end in a sob." Children and grandmothers, trappers and college professors, lifetime Yankees or transplanted Flatlanders: each finds the truth in Rule's observation that "revenge takes many forms -- some of which can heal."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Hardscrabble" is not only the name of the imprint, but also a good description of the lives of many of the protagonists of these stories, some of which appeared in the author's first collection, Wood Heat: Stories from Up North (Nightshade Press). Here is the stuff of classic New England life: small-town politics ("the last of the blood sports"), feuds between lakefront neighbors, a rain-soaked Little League game, checking trap lines in midwinter. Rule has an unerring ear for idiom and inflection, and her characters' voices are spot-on, whether they're the participants in a school district meeting in the wickedly funny opener, "Yankee Curse"; a phlegmatic old loner who meets his match in the rueful "The Widow and the Trapper"; or the child narrators of the poignant "Three" and "MaryMay's Eyes." The best of the stories finish on an unexpected yet thoroughly satisfying note. However, some of those at book's end, particularly "Saturday Night at the Hi-View Drive-In," "Bonfire" and "The White Room," seem to just stop mid-beat, making them more like character studies or fragments of longer works than self-contained pieces. Still, this is a solid offering from a graceful and versatile writer.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

A prolific short story writer twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Rule writes about what she knows. Her stories focus on life in her native New Hampshire, illuminating the good and the bad aspects of life in small communities and life in general. From Lindy up at bat to Judy at the drive-in to batty old Marymay, her portraits are exquisite; these stories are sharp, clear, and poignant. Whether she is vibrantly detailing little league baseball, small-town politics, hunting and fishing, or the individual quirks and foibles of relatives and neighbors, Rule renders the commonplace extraordinary; readers will recognize themselves in every story. Highly recommended.?Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: New Hampshire (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584653736
• ISBN-13: 978-1584653738
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,532,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gems of form and feeling, July 18, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Best Revenge: Short Stories (Hardscrabble Books-Fiction of New England) (Paperback)

Although I have long enjoyed Rebecca Rule's newspaper column on New Hampshire writers, I had never read any of her fiction (having somehow missed "Wood Heat" in 1992 and the hardcover printing of this collection, 1995). My loss. Rule's incisive, earthy prose captures the spirit and daily grind of small-town rural life with affection and humor, devoid of sentimentality.

Her characters are mostly natives who go back at least a couple of generations. They hunt, trap and fish, attend library committee and selectmen's meetings, bring up kids and fight with their spouses, usually about money. These are regular people. There are no drunkards, wife beaters or down-and-outs. When couples wrangle, you feel for both of them. Piercingly, you feel the anxiety of their children.

Many of Rule's characters strike an instant chord of recognition. The sour-tempered, know-it-all naysayer, Mort Wallace, who's got nothing better to do but waste everyone else's time cranking away at every public meeting. In "Yankee Curse" Mort absorbs the unspoken but imaginative curses of his neighbor Miranda Coffey who knits her way through a School District Meeting: "May your neighbors steal from your wood pile, Mort Wallace." "May a rat die between the studs of your bedroom wall." Or the grouchy lakefront neighbor who guards her turf by making her newcomer neighbors miserable in "The Best Revenge." There's more than one in every town.

Some stories are delightfully lighthearted. "Lindy Lowe at Bat," one of the few stories told in the third person, is a warmhearted tale of Little League baseball, the adult undercurrents on the sidelines, and a girl's determination. Dryly humorous, "The Widow and the Trapper," narrated by the flinty trapper, follows the surprising journey of a blossoming relationship, set against a background of trout, loons and human coexistence with nature.

But the most gripping stories are those dealing with family tensions and troubles. And the most gripping of those are the ones narrated by children. The troubles of their parents loom large and scary. Within the framework of rescuing a small cat from a tall tree in "Three," Rule evokes a time of grief, calamity, and anxiety for the future, culminating in a moment when a child puts herself in danger because bad things come in three and the thought of "the third bad thing" happening to her mother is unbearable.

Adults are often scary to the children who love and depend upon them. In "Walking the Trapline," the father is a man (like many of the men in these stories) who does what he wants and abides no backtalk from anyone. Though the narrator's younger brother is expected to learn about the trapline from age 9, less is expected of her. "He allowed me to come along when the weather was fine and the dishes done." The story, following a long, cold day on the trapline, focuses on the shifting family dynamics as the children band together for comfort and companionship, but defect into small betrayals in competition for their father's approval.

A day's fishing with her crusty grandfather is fraught with anxiety for the narrator of "Peach Baby Food Sandwiches" who awaits lunchtime with dread. Though the old man had consulted her about the peach baby food sandwich, his diatribe concerning her usual diet made it clear the consultation was rhetorical only. "I said no more on the subject but watched in quiet horror as he laid out sandwich makings on the scrubbed-pine table." The story is laugh-out-loud funny, but her fear and dread of an adult's explosive anger is palpable.

Rule's stories are beautifully crafted. Her situations are recognizable, often ordinary. A man whose family has been living in a cellar hole for four years buys a boat, "though he knew Phoebe had the money spent, though he knew she'd pop a gasket when she found out (maybe even because he knew)." A woman who decides to run for selectman, against her husband's wishes. A woman coping with a miscarriage by walking in the woods, in the footsteps of her dead great-grandmother.

The core of the characters' inner lives, expectations and background emerge seamlessly from the setting and situation. Each story is a small gem, a complete world in microcosm. These are classic stories, full of New England flavor, wit and subtlety.