Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life

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Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life

4.63 of 5 stars 4.63 · rating details · 41 ratings · 10 reviews

From a writer Steve Almond calls “the master of the down and out that just got worse” comes a collection of stories that live vividly in the reader’s memory long after the final page has been turned. Taking place in a world of desperate people who cling to hope, but have few expectations, Roberge introduces us to a motley crew of cripples, drug addicts, former child actors...more

Paperback, 112 pages

Published October 1st 2010 by Red Hen Press

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Oct 04, 2011 Antonia Crane rated it 5 of 5 stars

No one tells a devastating story of failed fathers like Rob Roberge. “Working Backwards” deserves to be read widely and used as a blueprint for short story telling. The only problem I have with this book is that is hasn’t sold ten million copies.
Roberge turns terrible impulses that reside within all of us into jaw dropping beauty. His stories leave an echo that’s hard to shake, like the sick babies and horrible loves in Lorrie Moore’s “Birds of America.” Before I go crazy with the failure-of-f...more No one tells a devastating story of failed fathers like Rob Roberge. “Working Backwards” deserves to be read widely and used as a blueprint for short story telling. The only problem I have with this book is that is hasn’t sold ten million copies.
Roberge turns terrible impulses that reside within all of us into jaw dropping beauty. His stories leave an echo that’s hard to shake, like the sick babies and horrible loves in Lorrie Moore’s “Birds of America.” Before I go crazy with the failure-of-fathers thread, I have to point out the gestation process of this book and how it was finally born because it’s crazy. Before Red Hen snatched up “Working Backwards,” it did laps in a literary Petri dish of close calls and false starts. It was nearly published several times, but in the financially ruinous economy was delayed and finally abandoned along with one failed publishing house. It was runner up in several contests, including “Other Voices.” After a stiff debate, it was beat by Corrina Wycoff’s novel “O Street.”
Roberge has a knack for the rhythm of grief that we inevitably dance to, whether we want to or not. In “Border Radio,” we see a father kill a man in front of his thirteen year-old son and we follow the bodies/bloodline to the kid’s grandfather who grafted goat balls to his patients as a fertility cure; A man who extracted huge amounts of money from sad men during the depression, and who was ultimately shot by one of his dying patients. That same grandfather started a radio station in Mexico and the waves carried that haunting familial music: devastated people leading horrific lives. That music is, somehow, the most comforting beautiful music I’ve heard in ages. “Border Radio” may just be my favorite short story ever written.
In “Swiss Engineering” a brother leaves our protagonist a Volvo after he dies of brain cancer at forty-two. The story is dusted with sad, beaten men, the impulses we are left with when the people we love die and, especially, the giddy, terrible rage and guilt we are left with, the “new words that hospitals and death give us,” (fugues, malignant, benign) and cars we don’t need. The protagonist enters the Volvo in a demolition derby in Destin Florida (the “Redneck Riviera”) and sees “ugly lousy people” and asks “Why not them? Who would miss them?” Our protagonist’s sad fury drives the fuck out of that Volvo and hears his own neck snap, the car, his body and his heart, crushed by the blows of loss.
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Dec 21, 2011 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a short, gut-punch of a collection of stories about down-and-outers. Fans of the short fiction of Donald Ray Pollock and Craig Davidson must read this book of stories mainly set in the southwest. Hell, fans of excellent, dark short fiction should read this book. Rob is a lean, mean stylist who doesn’t scrimp on the important details and doesn’t blink or look away from the warts on his characters; and the result is as oddly beautiful as it is disturbing. Favorite stories include “The Exte...more

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Sep 17, 2011 Sean Ferguson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've seen Rob Roberge's name floating around. He would pop up with names like Danielewski, Palahniuk, and King. He'd be included in a list of finds, or maybe as that extra something to get free shipping. I didn't avoid Roberge's work or forget about him, he's always there in purchased lists or grouped with like-minded authors, themes and tones that fall under the same literary hues on the color wheel of bookdom. Because I bought Dermaphoria a few years ago, I was told then that I might also enjoy More Than They Could Chew: A Novel. I looked at Lunar Park, eventually bought it, and I enjoyed every page. By the by, Rob Roberge.

He hadn't been left on my door step or passed through the doors of a bookstore with me, because there was always something immediate, something more intriguing, and when you read as slow as I do, you have to pick and choose. However, in a recent interview with Booked Podcast, Craig Clevenger remarked on a change in Roberge's writing with his latest effort. It is a change that inspired awe and left Craig wondering who broke Roberge's heart, especially since Rob is happily married. With a reaction like that, I could no longer go without taking Roberge lovingly into my read-hole. With little more than Clevenger's kind words and a long-lasting knowledge of a writer's name, I bought Working Backwards From the Worst Moment of My Life.

The book is a collection of short stories, first of all, which for whatever reason surprised me. I'm not sure why, I guess I was expecting a novel. That is how blindly I bought this book. The title inspired a hope, or maybe a belief, that this was going to be one story about some poor sap with some soul-sucking bad luck. Rather, a whole cast of characters live and breathe in these pages. Even in the shortest of stories, Roberge drives home words on a page so that they climb out and sit beside you. They smell, you can hear them scratching while you flip the page. They raid your fridge and play fetch with your dog.

The story opens with a character charged with the task to throw eggs at his mentally challenged brother like he were a carnival game, every time yolk exploded on him, he turned around and walked the other way. That story sets the tone for the rest of the book. It isn't going to be happy. There won't be a tale that doesn't get touched by the deranged acts of life, fate, or love. The tragedy that blooms here is life. All of this is real, all of this can be true, and Roberge's writing taps you on the shoulder, waves at you with one hand, and reaches inside, griping at your heart with the other. His words squeeze, the language grips, and the characters exist inside of you until you're mush between his fingers. These characters exist inside of you on the worst days of their lives, the pest exterminator, the narrator that watched his father kill someone, the home-bound injured man wondering why his wife hasn't left him yet, the ex-child star on his way to score pain pills. They walk around inside of you until you no longer know if you're one of them.

Release Date: October 1, 2010
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Oct 22, 2010 Patrick O'Neil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Rob Roberge writes of broken people, with broken dreams, living broken lives. They've got broken teeth, broken bones, and they're flat broke destitute. The only thing that isn't broken is Roberge's writing. As with his other two books, Drive, and More Than They Could Chew, his short stories and characters in Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life, are familiar in that it's like he channeled my entire social network and all my past acquaintances. Yet at the same time it was strangely...more

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Oct 02, 2010 Ron Burch rated it 5 of 5 stars

Reading Rob Roberge is like going to look at lithographs by Robert Riggs -- you know it's going to hurt, you know there's going to be some pain, and someone always bleeds yet won't shirk away from being hit. It's a tremendous collection with men who know their lives are slowly circling down, but they're going down with a shout and a swing. Roberge uses a NBA metaphor in the book and it's interesting because it's about men who play through pain. But I don't think of these men as losers. These are...more

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May 13, 2012 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiftyfiftyme, latfob, small-press, the-west

The collection features men and women who’ve been through the wringer and are trying to make changes in their lives. Roberge keeps them close, so that when they fail, we can see if they do so with grace or, as is more often the case, an utter lack of dignity. There are exterminators, demolition-derby drivers and men who share cells with desperadoes with the words “I can” and “see you” tattooed on their eyelids.

Things take a grisly turn in the second half of the collection as the stories move int...more

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Mar 20, 2011 Caleb Ross rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-short-stories-single-author

Amazing. Nothing more can be said.

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Feb 28, 2012 Ginger Dawn rated it 5 of 5 stars

WORKING BACKWARDS FROM THE WORST MOMENT OF MY LIFE: STORIES by Rob Roberge: A Book Review

Rob Roberge writes with concentrated raw intensity, honesty, and a modern literary intelligence that has left this reader in complete awe! His book, Working Backwards from the Worst Moments of My Life, is a collection of short stories that had me completely engrossed from the first story. It begins with Tommy Cronin and Pops. Roberge crafts a tale of what to do when a parent loves another child more than one...more WORKING BACKWARDS FROM THE WORST MOMENT OF MY LIFE: STORIES by Rob Roberge: A Book Review

Rob Roberge writes with concentrated raw intensity, honesty, and a modern literary intelligence that has left this reader in complete awe! His book, Working Backwards from the Worst Moments of My Life, is a collection of short stories that had me completely engrossed from the first story. It begins with Tommy Cronin and Pops. Roberge crafts a tale of what to do when a parent loves another child more than one’s own, the act of stealing Bibles, and the ethical dilemma of murder. Readers will also be mesmerized by the tale of Beano and Gary. The Psychological outcome of a journalistic reporter and a boxing chimp that has all the “frustration and angst” and questions what is ones own reality world and that of a celebrity with an existential flare. Now most of these stories do not give an ending, opinion, nor conclusion but satisfy you and have you wanting more. Not only are these details not needed but are so well crafted that the reader feels that you become one with the author. This is an incredibly rare gift that Roberge has etched with passion. His invitation to the reader is not only as a witness but to become a participant in the novel. For example, when Hank enters into the Psychiatric hospital to end his relationship with Geri he “watches her, studies her for a few minutes. He’ll brand this image into him until it hurts more than it already does. He rocks back and forth with her motions. He starts to hum and hits her pitch and volume. After a few more minutes, when he’s done all he can to remember this, he walks out.” I found myself immediately humming, “Everybody Hurts” by REM. It was at this point that I saw the pure genius of Roberge that life is a conspiracy of raw emotion and relationships that can’t be summarized or wrapped neatly into a story. All the complex ideas that are presented in each of these short stories awakened the reader to a new purpose of moving forward and backward. Moreover, the author resonates this theme when he wrote, “life is full of scattered moments and fragments, of evidence and events piled up behind him…You follow it, study it, maybe it leads somewhere, maybe it tells you something, like the debris field around an accident.” I truly believe that Mr. Roberge writes with heart and soul. His stories flow easily and he has made the ordinary into something truly remarkable! I highly recommend WORKING BACKWARDS FROM THE WORST MOMENT OF MY LIFE: STORIES by Rob Roberge I look forward to reading more of his work and watching his success as a writer.
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Mar 11, 2013 Judi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

Howl! One of the best collection of short stories I have ever read. Dark, dark, dark. Up there in same league as Harry Crews, Katherine Dunn. Tight writing. Loved it. My two favorite stories (hard to choose) are Beano's Deal and What Ever Happened to Billy Brody? I might give "Billy Brody" a slight edge as it is set is a dismal area of Southern California that I am quite familiar with. I shall now add all of Rob Roberge's books to my list of "to reads". I am a fan.

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Jul 06, 2012 Robb Todd added it

Shelves: 2012, short-stories

Lots of dated pop culture references and exposition.

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