{"product_id":"9781584653738","title":"The Best Revenge: Short Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwice 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.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University Press of New England","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47040829522160,"sku":"9781584653738","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781584653738_p0.jpg?v=1763801083","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781584653738","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}