The first time I read Karen Russell, I didn’t really understand what I was reading. Were stories allowed to be told this way? Magical and surreal, but still so heavily grounded in reality that the reader couldn’t help but feel the gravity of the character’s predicaments? Karen Russell’s highly anticipated new collection of short stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove has gotten favorable reviews in The New York Times. In fact, the only bad reviews have been that the stories are good, but Karen Russell could do better.
The stories are diverse in their strangeness, always bordering on hilarity, but almost too serious to be funny. In the title story, a vampire struggles to meet his wife’s needs (he is too frightened to sleep in the cave at night with the other bats, he just wants to drink the tart juice of the lemons in the grove). In “The Barn at the End of Our Term,” past United States presidents are finding themselves reincarnated as horses–
‘I’m not dead…’ Eisenhower says. ‘I’m incognito. The Secret Service must have found some way to hide me here, until such time as I can return to my body and resume governance of this country. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I’m no horse.’
–and in “The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis,” four boys’ seemingly harmless prank comes back to haunt them. Don’t be mistaken, Karen Russell’s stories are not gothic horror stories, rather the characters just bump into odd twists of life which cause them to have to make difficult decisions.
My favorite story in this collection is “Reeling for the Empire.” Japanese girls are being collected from rural villages to spin silk, but what they think is just a year of factory work, is a life-changing experience. Literally. They are turned into silkworms. The silk coils in their stomach and is pulled from their fingertips in long, silky strands.
Karen Russell’s short stories are a great escape from reality, although I can’t guarantee that the escape will be any less real than life.
And if you haven’t yet read the Pulitzer-Prize finalist, Swamplandia, you better get onboard.
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