The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories - by Ethan Rutherford (Paperback)

About the Book

The stories in The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories, a collection from Ethan Rutherford, map the surprising ways in which the world we think we know can unexpectedly reveal its darker contours.

In stories that are alternately funny, persuasive, and compelling, unforgettable characters are confronted with, and battle against, the limitations of their lives.

Rutherford s work has been selected by Alice Sebold for inclusion in the volume of The Best American Short Stories that she edited, and also published in Ploughshares, One Story, and American Short Fiction."

Book Synopsis

The stories in The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories, a collection from Ethan Rutherford, map the surprising ways in which the world we think we know can unexpectedly reveal its darker contours.

In stories that are alternately funny, persuasive, and compelling, unforgettable characters are confronted with, and battle against, the limitations of their lives.

Rutherford's work has been selected by Alice Sebold for inclusion in the volume of The Best American Short Stories that she edited, and also published in Ploughshares, One Story, and American Short Fiction.

From the Back Cover

Alternately funny, menacing, and deeply empathetic, the wildly inventive stories in Ethan Rutherford's The Peripatetic Coffin mark the debut of a powerful new voice in contemporary fiction

Worried about waning enrollment, the head counselor of the world's worst summer camp leads his campers on a series of increasingly dubious escapades in an effort to revive their esprit de corps. A young boy on a sailing vacation with his father comes face-to-face with a dangerous stranger, and witnesses a wrenching act of violence. Parents estranged from their disturbed son must gird themselves for his visit, even as they cannot face each other. And in the dazzling title story, the beleaguered crew of the first Confederate submarine embarks on their final, doomed mission during the closing days of the Civil War.

Whether set aboard a Czarist-era Russian ship locked in Arctic ice, on a futuristic whaling expedition whose depredations guarantee the environmental catastrophe that is their undoing, or in a suburban basement where two grade-school friends articulate their mutual obsessions, these strange, imaginative, and refreshingly original stories explore the ways in which we experience the world: as it is, as it could be, and the dark contours that lie between.

Review Quotes

"A confident and winning collection, every story in The Peripatetic Coffin feels necessary and true. Ethan Rutherford gets it." - Patrick DeWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers
"Refreshingly raw short stories. . . . [Rutherford's] powerful debut presents each scenario in a humorous, reality-based manner, exploring life's various limitations and exposing the truth of its unpredictability. . . . Each character is compelling and sympathetic. . . . Rutherford reveals something painstakingly humane and beautiful in mistakes and misdirection." - Nylon Magazine
"Refreshingly raw . . . [Rutherford's] powerful debut presents each scenario in a humorous, reality-based manner, exploring life's various limitations and exposing the truth of its unpredictability... Rutherford reveals something painstakingly humane and beautiful in mistakes and misdirection." - Nylon Magazine
"[A] fine debut collection. The stories serve as compass points on a map of desolation and isolation. . . . This is a beautiful book about human suffering, about human quandaries. It is also about bravery, history, love, longing, scientific and sexual exploration." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The Peripatetic Coffin, Ethan Rutherford's debut collection of short stories, is a keeper. His work creeps up on you when you're not looking. . . . Eight masterful tales inject power, subtlety and emotion into an unforgettable cast of beleaguered, doomed characters." - Shelf Awareness
"Rutherford's mastery of setting and world building lends these stories tangible reality, while lyrical, character-appropriate language adds authenticity to the compulsively readable plots. Rutherford's greatest strength resides in the sweetness and strength of his characters, who face up to loss, misfortune, and heartbreak with courage and a weird kind of humor that makes these stories both resonant and rereadable." - Booklist
"Rutherford's mastery of setting and world building lends these stories tangible reality... compulsively readable plots... the sweetness and strength of his characters, who face up to loss, misfortune, and heartbreak with courage and a weird kind of humor... makes these stories both resonant and rereadable." - Booklist
"Rutherford's sharp, inspired debut collection runs the gamut of emotion and genre, blending laughter and misery, reality and fantasy, in eight tales that ponder the methods in which humans achieve isolation. . . . These are robust, engaging stories." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This is my desert island book. The one I will always carry with me. Moving seamlessly from one world to another, from oceans to a snow-covered meadow to the rooms of childhood, each story is a vessel of longing and possibility; collectively, they present a mosaic of our past and our future, reinvigorating the art of storytelling-what Rutherford has accomplished here is a revelatory feat of the imagination, and The Peripatetic Coffin is an incomparable, vital debut." - Paul Yoon, author of Once the Shore
"My desert island book. The one I will always carry with me... each story is a vessel of longing and possibility; collectively, they present a mosaic of our past and our future, reinvigorating the art of storytelling... a revelatory feat of the imagination... an incomparable, vital debut." - Paul Yoon, author of Once the Shore
"Ethan Rutherford's stories are absolutely perfect. He writes with such sensitivity and clarity about how and why things come undone and fall apart. I rarely feel this close to heartbreak, this strengthened by a writer clearly doing something special" - Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
"This is a flat-out beautiful book of stories... Not all books of stories are page-turners, but this one is." - Charles Baxter, author of National Book Award finalist The Feast of Love
"Rutherford's wildly inventive collection is nothing short of a revelation.... no experience is beyond this very fine writer's ambitious grasp. He gives us the world with each story, with the world's full measure of heartbreak and hilarity." - Ben Fountain, author of National Book Award finalist Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
"Ethan Rutherford's wildly inventive collection is nothing short of a revelation. From polar expeditions to family turmoil to the travails of the first submariners, no experience is beyond this very fine writer's ambitious grasp. He gives us the world with each story, with the world's full measure of heartbreak and hilarity." - Ben Fountain, author of National Book Award finalist Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
"Ethan Rutherford's stories are funny and wrenching and feature hapless fatalists who nonetheless never stop striving, whose motto might be It's Not Too Late to Take Responsibility for What We're Doing, even as they continue to squander such opportunities. And yet they never let us forget that there's always the possibility that they will learn-even if it's the hard way-to see beyond themselves." - Jim Shepard, author of National Book Award finalist Like You'd Understand Anyway
"Funny and wrenching, featuring hapless fatalists who nonetheless never stop striving, even as they continue to squander opportunities. And yet they never let us forget that there's always the possibility that they will learn--even if it's the hard way--to see beyond themselves." - Jim Shepard, author of author of National Book Award finalist Like You'd Understand, Anyway
"Oh how I love these stories! Ethan Rutherford can slay you with humor and buoy you within the midst of tragedy. His range is amazing. Every story is 100% Grade-A storytelling. I bow down to The Peripatetic Coffin." - Alice Sebold, author of The Lucky Bones and Lucky
"This is a flat-out beautiful book of stories. Who would ever guess that the Iraq War could be echoed in summer camp, or that the first ill-fated Confederate submarine would have an unforgettable crew, or that Ethan Rutherford's imagination could accommodate the psychology of men and boys, in groups and in isolation, and of the girls and women who have observed them? The tonal range moves from laugh-out-loud funny to snowed-in somber. Whatever the tone and subject, the stories' excellence is never in doubt. Not all books of stories are page-turners, but this one is." - Charles Baxter, author of National Book Award finalist The Feast of Love