Karen RussellSt. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

I don't think anything captures the feeling of the painful period between childhood and adolescence as well as Karen Russell's anthology St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. These dark, eldritch short stories tell the tales of children who get trapped in a city of giant seashells, follow the Oregon Trail with their minotaur parents, and attend a summer camp for insomniacs. This anthology was Karen Russell's authorial debut, which is a rather striking achievement, considering that she was only 25 when it was published and that it won her attention from the National Book Foundation. One of the stories in this book, "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," was the basis of Russell's 2011 novel Swamplandia!, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times and won her a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize. Now is the perfect time to read this first anthology, as her next collection of short stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, is set for release next month. There are some noticeable patterns among these stories--they tend to feature a young protagonist between the ages of 11-15 who is alienated from any parental influence and plunged into a bizarre scenario. This protagonist generally begins the story feeling lonely and haunted and ends feeling doubly so. One can easily forgive Russell for whatever elements of formula she may use, though. She more than makes up for it with her masterfully resonant voice and compellingly surreal settings. While the emotions in these tales are perfectly true to life, the scenarios they take place in have an eerily dreamlike quality. This collection is the perfect thing to read before going to bed, if you won't be too unnerved to sleep. In case the promise of these dark fantasies alone isn't enough, I can also assure you that Russell's rich prose is peppered with clever humor. Personally, I find there to be something rather hysterical in her curt way of describing the world. There's a certain endearing honesty when she says things like "Mr. Pappadakis is estranged from lucidity. On his bad days, he thinks Big Red is a figment of his imagination. On his good days, he lives around her, in the polite, damning way that he will eat around certain loathesome foods on his plate." (Said of the same character: "He refuses to put down toilet seats, or quit sucking on pistachio shells, or die.") Russell's humor takes a turn for the absurd in other stories, like in "Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers," the entendre-laden tale of a young man trying to soothe his crush to sleep in a hot air balloon over an insomniacs' summer camp. I simply can't recommend this collection enough. If you like the intensely magical works of popular writers like Neil Gaiman or Susanna Clarke, surreal literature like that of Gabriel Marcia Marquez, or even if you're a fan of Grimms' Fairy Tales, there's a great chance that this anthology will suit your tastes.

I hesitated to begin reading this book, because I was disappointed with the author's other offering, Swamplandia!. It had beautiful imagery, a great setting and lots of imagination, but the plot just plodded along so slowly that I wound up just skimming the last hundred pages to find out what happened.But Russell's writing style is perfectly suited for short stories, and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. She still uses beautiful imagery, fascinating settings and imaginative plotlines, but within the confines of a short story, you don't get as impatient for the plot to pick up.This book was difficult to put down, my mind kept wandering back to it when I was in the office or at the gym. And now that I've finished it, my mind still keeps wandering back to those stories. There is not a single story in her collection that I have not gone back to and re-read. I even convinced my best friend and my boyfriend to let me read aloud to them from the book.A quick run-down of the stories:"Ava Wrestles the Alligator" - The short story that inspired her first novel, taking place in an abandoned alligator wrestling theme park."Haunting Olivia" - Two young boys use some magical goggles to search for their younger sister, who are struggling to confront feelings of guilt related to her untimely death."Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers" - One of my favorites, a camp for kids with sleep disorders that gets more excitement than they bargained for."The Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crime" - My least favorite, I stopped reading this partway through and only finished it after I had read all the others."from Children's Reminiscences of the Westward Migration" - My very favorite, a group of families embark on a trip out west to claim land to build on. The narrator's father happens to be a centaur."Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artificial Snows" - I didn't like this one as much. It had some nice descriptions (the setting is an ice-skating rink that produces artificial snow down in Florida), but there wasn't much of a plot."The City of Shells" - A girl falls into an exceptionally large shell, when a boy tries to pull her out he gets trapped inside with her."Out to Sea" - A group of delinquent teenagers pay visits to old folks in a retirement community consisting of a collection of houseboats."Accident Brief, Occurence # 00/422" - A helicopter crash in the mountains with some sinister characters."St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" - One of my favorites, a group of sisters raised by werewolves are taught to imitate human behavior to fit in with society, with varying degrees of success.

I'm not sure why I waited so long to read this. In the last year, Swamplandia! has been a book that has stuck with me much longer than I expected it to. Some of these stories will do the same.Every story in this collection is fascinating and haunting in its own way. Many take place in the same universe as Swamplandia! Many contain a bizarre supernatural element--Minotaurs, werewolves, etc.--but in such a way that defy genre expectations.It seems that it's required to rank the stories in any short story collection. While I won't go that far, the stories I enjoyed the most were "The Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crime" and "From Children's Reminisces of the Westward Migration.""Star-Gazer" is a sharp story of a kid trying to grow up, and not really liking who he is becoming. It's a story of bad influences and trying to fit in. Plus, turtles!"from Children's Reminisces of the Westward Migration" is like The Oregon Trail meets the Labyrinth of Crete. A minotaur father hauls his family westward in a wagon train. As you'd expect, it doesn't go well. While no one dies of dysentery, it's a struggle.In Swamplandia! and in some of these stories, 'Westward Migration' in particular, a familiar theme crops up: hope. More specifically, the futility of hope. Maybe it's my own natural cynicism, but these stories are particularly stinging because the characters are so hopeful, and for what? All that awaits them is pain, suffering, and loss.

Great short stories, full of imagination and well written

Ten short grown-up fairy tales all set in the same strange island community. I enjoyed this book, finding the stories delightfully odd, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't like the surreal or when endings aren't quite wrapped up properly. Russell's second book and first novel 'Swamplandia' is the complete version of the first story in this book 'Ava Wrestles the Alligator'.

This is a fascinating collection of clever funny short stories and the title story is the best. It's a great twist on the current trend of werewolf literature.Set in a Jesuit institution, the nuns set out to civilise the offspring of the local human and wolf populations with the grudging consent of parents of both species and turn their progeny into more acceptable adults.Reminiscent of the awful separation and isolation of aboriginal children in North America and Australia the story is so cleverly written that besides being amusing it conveys a sense of wonder and realism.

The worlds painted by Karen Russell are weird, wonderful and very recognisable. I thoroughly enjoyed the imagery, the unapologetic strangeness of the characters and the emotions they invoked. These stories speak of growing up and changing, but they do so without ever getting sentimental or forced. And when the reader is left hanging at the sudden ends of the stories, it feels right. The way dreams are strange and yet familiar, end abruptly and still tell us a lot about ourselves.

Karen Russell is by far my favourite modern writer. I've read this collection maybe five times, and I'm not done yet.