Fiction Book Reviews

Book Review: Getting Even: Revenge Stories

By Sandy Amazeen Feb 4, 2008, 17:41 GMT

Anyone who has ever been burnt by love and fantasized of a suitable payback will delight in this collection of seventeen revenge stories. Naturally, there are plenty of downtrodden women so belittled by long years of abuse that no one would envision them getting even yet they manage to do so in some pretty inventive ways as in Tony Fenelly’s “How to Kill an Aries”. Danuta Reah treats readers to a delightful, mouse that roared tale in “Glazed” while Stella Duffy offers up a haunting story of suicide and retribution in “Payment in Kind”. A few are truly twisted as in “Esprit de Corpse” by Jean Lamb where a woman’s spirit remains trapped in her dead body and she must endure the mortician’s attentions while planning her escape or “Dolls, Revenge, Dolls Again” by Chris Dunning that may leave readers looking differently at their children’s playthings. Innovative, twisted, often piquant, these tales will amuse and delight as they dish up the sweet taste of revenge.