The Feud Thomas Berger by Thomas Berger 9781480468559, 148046855X, B00GSE3VPS instant download after payment.

 In The Feud, Thomas Berger returns to the era and milieu that he knows best - small-town America in the 1930s, chronicling encounters, hostile and amorous, between members of the Bellers of Hornbeck and Bullards of Millville.  The trouble begins when Dolf Beller, on an innocent mission for paint remover, chews an unlit cigar in Bud Bullard's hardware store, where no smoking is allowed. Within 24 hours the store burns down. Dolf's car blows up - and the feud begins.

"I marked my copy of The Feud with a star wherever its blend of irony, parody and slapstick made me laugh out loud; some pages look like a map of the Milky Way." (The Washington Post Book World)  

"...The Feud might suggest Berger viewed the 1930s as a rung or three down from the point we've now reached on the evolutionary ladder, but even his more contemporary books have that habit of cutting to the dark heart of people's basest urges and motivations and highlighting them in slapstick circumstances. His primary themes are victimisation, bullying, physical need and rivalry and, curiously, a rather gentle romantic yearning and moving camaraderie. "You will understand my work best when you are at your most selfish," he once said.  As reluctant as I am to advocate the pursuit of looking out for number one, I think that can only serve as a recommendation."  -  Tom Cox, The Guardian

Thomas Louis Berger (1924–2014)  was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.