In Breaking it Down, Rusty Barnes lays bare the lives of the vulnerable as they traverse the difficult paths of love. Short and punchy, these stories show the cumulative effects of heartbreak and simple dreams while keeping a reserve of hope in even the darkest of circumstances.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
The stories of Rusty Barnes are short, sharp, and shocking in their humanity. His characters are like sad love songs, sweet and full of hurt. --Steve Almond, author of (not that you asked)
Behind all his characters...there's a quietly humane authorial presence interested in exploring our frail humanity in a way that reminds of the early work of Raymond Carver. Rusty Barnes is his own writer, though, and his flash fiction is terrific. --Edward Falco, author of Wolf Point
The jolt of this slim, intense collection is bracing. Barnes s narrative art is as masterful as his vision is profoundly honest and humane. His characters, like Robert Frost s, are mainly rural, poor, and farm-bound, and yet their agons are those of classical tragedy. Voicing these inarticulate characters with image, gesture, and narrative eloquence, Barnes opens the core of their imagined lives. --DeWitt Henry, co-founder of Ploughshares
Behind all his characters...there's a quietly humane authorial presence interested in exploring our frail humanity in a way that reminds of the early work of Raymond Carver. Rusty Barnes is his own writer, though, and his flash fiction is terrific. --Edward Falco, author of Wolf Point
The jolt of this slim, intense collection is bracing. Barnes s narrative art is as masterful as his vision is profoundly honest and humane. His characters, like Robert Frost s, are mainly rural, poor, and farm-bound, and yet their agons are those of classical tragedy. Voicing these inarticulate characters with image, gesture, and narrative eloquence, Barnes opens the core of their imagined lives. --DeWitt Henry, co-founder of Ploughshares
About the Author
Rusty Barnes grew up in Mosherville, Pennsylvania. He received his BA from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from Emerson College. His flash fiction has appeared in many journals, among them Pindeldyboz, Salt Flats Annual, and SmokeLong Quarterly, and he edits the literary journal Night Train. He lives in Revere, Massachusetts with his family.
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More About the Author
Rusty Barnes grew up in rural northern Appalachia. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in over a hundred fifty journals and anthologies. After editing fiction for the Beacon Street Review (now Redivider) and Zoetrope All-Story Extra, he co-founded Night Train, a literary journal which has been featured in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio. Sunnyoutside Press published a collection of his flash fiction, Breaking it Down, in November 2007. MiPOesias published his poetry chapbook Redneck Poems in October 2010. In early 2011, Sunnyoutside will publish his collection of traditional fiction, Mostly Redneck.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great things come in small packages,
By Xujun Eberlein "xje" (Boston, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Breaking it Down (Paperback)
In this book, Rusty Barnes tells 18 stories that are both poignant and memorable. Barnes is a master of flash fiction, who says more in a paragraph than can usually be found in a page. The characters and imagery quickly grabbed me, and held me in their short embrace. For the past week, I read a few each evening like savoring a delicious bitter-melon dish, a Sichuanese favorite, before falling asleep with a heavy heart.
The stories have an intensity that surprised me. Frequently, the situations described are grim, sometimes helpless. In the opening story, "What Needs to be Done," a farm wife of 30-years has to balance the guilt of infidelity with her 19-year-old brother-in-law, against any hope of a moment's happiness. The concurrent senses of right and wrong from a simple heart reveal unexpected complexity. Many of the stories are set in rural America, often hinting of the South, and the characters are usually unsophisticated. Barnes, however, has managed to mix a variety of cultural overtones into the characters that made me reflect on myself. One of my favorites is Beamer, the opera loving farmer who, to his last breath sings Arias to the dancing cows. Coincidentally, "playing music to the cow" is a Chinese adage that derides someone who speaks to the wrong audience. In the story "Beamer's Opera," our innocent writer unintentionally turns the saying around, as Beamer's whole life unfolds in a few pages and ends as artfully as it is portrayed. Despite all their woes, the characters take the situations in stride, and Barnes renders this with authenticity. Presented from a number of different points of view, the narration never gets in the way of what is happening. Even those written in second person, which I almost always have trouble reading, came through crystal clear. This was another surprise to me - I did not expect a flash to have as complete a storyline and characterization as a "regular" short story. I have not been what you would call a fan of flash fiction; Barnes makes me feel that should change.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Breaking me,
This review is from: Breaking it Down (Paperback)
I hate Rusty Barnes. Having typed that sentence I realise that it likely needs quite a bit of explanation. I'm a writer. A pretty good one, I think. As a writer I can't help analysing every piece of fiction I read. Often while reading something in a literary magazine or some new anthology I will find myself thinking I can do better than that. Sometimes, though, I read something so shockingly well constructed, so moving, so damn good that I start to hurt that I didn't write it. Once in a very great while I read something that is so good that while I love the story, I have to hate the writer the way a boxer must hate his opponent a little.
Amy Hempel has done that to me twice (Nashville Gone to Ashes and The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried). George Saunders did it to me with The Wave Maker Falters. Raymond Carver's A Small Good Thing did it. So did Charles Bookwork's Women. Now Rusty Barnes has done it. He did it with `No one left to Worry About the Fat Man`. That's a tiny little story buried in his new collection, Breaking it Down. That story left me staring at the page thinking that I could not have possibly just read what I thought I had read. That story alone would make the book worthwhile. It isn't alone, though. All of the tales in this book are well written and compelling. Breaking it Down is a tiny book. It slips easily into a pocket, which is, I think, the perfect format for a collection of flash fiction. Barnes writes about rural people. His characters are poor and damaged and often larger than the stories they inhabit. Barnes has a way of breaking a scene down into just a few words of well tuned description and a hint of stage direction. He crafts rich, full characters. In this book are stories that are more concerned with people than literary artifice. That's a bit shocking these days. It's also very welcome.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unique and well written,
By
This review is from: Breaking it Down (Paperback)
The grit of these stories stays with you for a long time, and better yet, these well written micro/flash stories are moving as well as dark and unforgettable. Things are often not what they seem but in very creative ways. They can be opposite of where the reader thinks they are going or completely over the edge of the cliff the reader is balancing on.
The story "Beamer's Opera," is an amazing tapestry of work which can be viewed in more than one way. It, as all 18 of the stories in Breaking It Down, was crafted in only a few pages. "What Needs to Be Done," the first story in the collection sets the tone, where in this one, a woman who is stuck in a bad marriage with a drunken southern farmer fuels her life with an affair in the barn with the man's son.
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