MY SISTER'S VENGEANCE AND OTHER VENGEFUL STORIES

Green presents an assortment of short stories about payback, one-upmanship, and revenge gone awry.

The author’s dedication (“This book is dedicated to those seeking revenge. May you have the day that you deserve. Just remember to dig TWO graves”) clues readers that Green proffers an ethically complex worldview in which revenge is no simple matter—unlike, say, the wicked short tales of John Collier and Roald Dahl, in which the “hows” of revenge are more germane to the plots than the “whys.” In “The Eternal Ride,” the narrator, while taking a ride on a Ferris wheel, has an opportunity to exact punishment on the former classmate she believes to have stalked her three years earlier. But what if she has misunderstood what happened all along? In “One-Way Ticket,” a cuckolded husband, now armed with a winning lottery ticket, takes his wife on a spiteful dream vacation. When she ultimately decides to leave him for a financially uncertain future with her likely feckless lover, the question of which one of them really succeeded in having the last laugh remains open. “The Stinger” is a little “conte cruel” in which a boy covets a high-end water gun for wintery fights against his peer tormentors; it does not go well. The longest story (which is not very long at all) is “My Sister’s Vengeance,” a fantasy (recalling some of the non–“Sleepy Hollow” musings of Washington Irving) set on a mystical world called Inertia, where God is still very much a presence. Yet even in this seeming paradise, a venerated and ageless nun called Jessica Lynch feels an irresistible temptation to seek retribution, consequences be damned. The spiritually corrosive elements of revenge are the point here, not whiplash narrative twists or suspenseful chills, so those who want their avengings attuned to more basic commercial tastes are probably better served with a viewing of Kill Bill or Death Wish.

A bitter bouquet of seedling-like stories about aspects of resentment and revenge.