Imagine cartoonist Lynda Barry rewriting Tobacco Road
, and you'll have a decent idea of what Lehman, a retired University of Cincinnati freshman comp instructor, is trying to achieve in his debut novella. "Revenge" in the title is misspelled because the story is narrated by soon-to-be-eight Little Carrie, who mangles the English language phonetically and otherwise. Carrie lives with her mother and older sister in a small town in Ohio. (Little Possum is based in Cincinnati.) A visit from Carrie's uncle Mocky and her mother's marriage to an aspiring auto restorer drive the action: Mocky is a gay French prof, and the stepfather is an angry, bigoted loser with a chip on his shoulder. The story is as slender as the book—Carrie adores her uncle and despises her new father—but Lehman does a charming job presenting Carrie, whose sister is a "pre-Madonna" and whose stepfather "reeks havick where ever he goes." (Feb.)
