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Aug 24, 2011

karen rated it:

first of all - greg- i lied to you. i told you that the conch shell story (the city of shells) was my favorite because i felt put on the spot and distracted, and that was the first one i thought of. but my real favorite story is the one on the boated retirement community (out to sea). god - i felt that one in my dessicated old heart-sac.

i really enjoyed this collection. the stories all contain wavery bits of the surreal - her style reminds me more of kelly link than george saunders, More...

33 comments like (48 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2011

Nancy rated it:

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is an unusual collection of imaginative, quirky, moving, unsettling, and stylishly written stories featuring troubled children as they learn, grow, and make their way in the world. Their parents are flawed and dealing with their own issues as well, like the minotaur who moves his human family out west for a fresh start. While I enjoyed the majority of stories in this collection, I found they suffered from sameness and repetition, which is why this boo More...

15 comments like (30 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

Greg rated it:

This collection of short stories was quite good.

I'm awful at writing reviews for short story collections, mostly because I'm too lazy or forgetful to jot down notes about the individual stories when I finish them, so the entire collection sort of becomes jumbled up in my head. These kind of fall into the George Saunders like style of writing, weird slightly off-kilter distortions of the real world, but unlike some of the George Saunders-esque writers out there is never the feeling t More...

4 comments like (24 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

Brandy rated it:

On its own, each story in this collection is a treasure, in which children have minotaurs for fathers or hunt for the ghosts of siblings washed to sea in giant clamshell sleds. Russell's distinct voice shines through each piece, and coming across one of these in the magazines where they first appeared would be a genuine treat.

Unfortunately, the stories are weakened by being strung together. Russell writes in a distinct voice, but nearly every story is written in that same voice. More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 04, 2011

Stephen M rated it:

“The City of Shells closed to the visiting public over an hour ago. Now the boardwalk is deserted. Silent, except for the medleyed roar of the waves and the distant rumble of thunder. Gray, rain-bellied clouds are rolling in. Farther out, the sea is sluicing into night. There’s a hushed, tingly feeling in the air, as if the whole world is holding its breath. Only the silvery gulls dot the horizon. They peck at used condoms and empty Dorito bags with a salt-preened serenity.”

There are More...

7 comments like (9 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

sarah rated it:

Honestly, I just can't read this anymore. There were two stories left, but I had to put it down.

Individually, the stories in this volume are highly creative, heartbreaking and imaginative, but taken as a volume, the sheer similarities between all of the tales made me want to pull my hair out. Russell is obviously very talented, but I'd love to read something that isn't told from an overly precocious child's point of view, that doesn't end in medias res, and that doesn't involve stra More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

Elijah rated it:

Karen Russell takes a lot of the trends that are popular in literary fiction and uses them right. Her stories are full of funny, hearbreaking, and strangely unique details without usually feeling too quirky for the sake of being quirky, and her stories weave the absurd into the every day in a way that feels right, instead of jarring (except when it's supposed to be jarring, naturally). I think that I would've liked each of these stories even more if I'd read them separately though, as together i More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 29, 2007

oriana rated it:

The only reason this isn't a 5-star is that I hate short stories. Sorry, but I do. It just doesn't make sense to me -- either they're little bits of fluff that are quickly forgotten, or they're involved and interesting, and there is no reason for them to end.

The stories in this book are an example of the latter case. These stories are terrific! Karen Russel has an incredible command of language (she uses the word 'limn' in almost every story), and a fascinating imagination. The stor More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Sep 12, 2007

Jenny rated it:

Russell has massive amounts of talent, evidenced by these magical tale spun out of the simplest beginnings: an underwater search for a dead sister using ghost-spying goggles, an island attraction of empty giant conch shells that play eerie music when the wind is up, a pack of were-girls given by their parents to nuns for a chance at a better life. All ten short stories weave elements of the real and the bizarre as if it were perfectly normal, and in this brilliant mirror the absurdities of real More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 18, 2009

Trin rated it:

Confession time: I think Kelly Link’s and Aimee Bender’s short stories are only okay. Occasionally one of their tales will astound me, but mostly I’m a bit “meh” on them—especially compared to how much many readers I respect love them. (Personally, I prefer Stacey Richter.) So when I say that Karen Russell’s short stories read like Link or Bender rejects, I hope you can see how faint an endorsement that is coming from me. Most of the stories in this collection feature young first person narrator More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2007

Paul rated it:

This is a book of short stories with abrupt and uncertain endings. I don't like short stories. I don't like abrupt and/or uncertain endings. I gave this book five stars. I guess that says something about the quality of Russell's writing.

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 23, 2011

Richard rated it:

I'm the youngest kid in my family, but sometimes I wish I had a little sister like Scout from "To Kill a Mockingbird". My little sister would be my protege and fall under the auspices my protection. If I had a little sister I would chase off her teenage boy suitors with a baseball bat, I would take her to an ice cream parlor for dates and I would buy her this book. It seems like the sort of book a smart little sister would want to read: hip, cute, quirky, bold, featuring clever use of More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

Richard rated it:

A lot of sharp writing in here, phrases worth underlining and keeping separately in a notebook. And stories rightly worthy of acclaim. Russell creates characters who are just screaming at the world to find their places in it--places that just aren't there, so of course they have to make their own hovels, whether they are in giant shells or on the face of glaciers. Russell is probably one of the best writers about youth that I've read--many of her narrators are young boys, and she deftly avoid More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

Kathy rated it:

I was uncertain about it when I started, but I ended up really enjoying this little collection. My favorite piece is the title piece, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves", a wonderfully imaginative story about assimilation and etiquette for pre-pubescent to adolescent wolves as they move into the human world. It's full of some really humorous moments that made me laugh out loud, and instances of awkward growing pains that brought back memories of adolescence.

Most More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Leah rated it:

Again, Russell's prose is nothing short of magic. Yet all but one of the stories in this collection lack a sense of resolution. Which I suppose is interesting in its own right... But I am old now, less academic, and far more interested in literary stories which can also maintain a hint of plot. But I do love her quirk. And her sentences. Even if they are problematic in their whole.

I did love the title story.

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 22, 2009

Kim rated it:

These stories are wonderfully creative, beautifully written, and make me very jealous of Karen Russell in general. So why the low rating? Because almost every single one of the stories ended too soon! I don't mean "ended sooner than I would have liked, and I'm sad that I can't stay with it longer" - well, that's actually true as well. But I mean "ended right as things were getting interesting, leaving everything not just unresolved but in fact disappointing and bewildering, since More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

David rated it:

I'm about half-way through this collection of stories and so far they are hilarious. As offbeat as the title suggests, but very funny.

(added after finishing the book): Well, oddly enough, offbeat kind of wears thin after a while. So that, in the end, I give this collection only 3 stars. The cumulative effect of reading all these stories in a single week is a bit like being trapped in the funhouse - you emerge slightly dazed, and relieved to be back in normal territory. Although these More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2011

Bill rated it:

Odd yet engaging stories, beautifully told. Several people are getting this for Christmas -- don't tell 'em!

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 06, 2008

Nicole rated it:

I spotted this book on the shelf in the library stacks and couldn't walk by without picking it up. It's a short story collection, exploring the magic in the cusp of childhood to young adult hood. The stories don't wrap up neatly, seeming more like a slice out of a larger life, but an interesting one. The title story explores themes of belonging, peer pressure, change, civilisation, expectations. I love how fantastic creatures (a Minotaur, werewolves, ghosts) are accepted, and the story focuse More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2009

Aerin rated it:

I came across this book during a grab-Starbucks-browse-Barnes&Noble getaway from my children. An hour of drifting through the aisles, jotting titles to add to my Paperback Swap wishlist, sipping a hot espresso truffle – heaven.

St. Lucy’s was sitting face-out on the shelf, and for better or for worse, I am drawn to books that I judge by their covers. This one features the illustration of a little girl in a white and red pinafore riding the back of a shaggy brown wolf. The girl’s p More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 24, 2008

Powells.com rated it:

I was thrilled and enamored with the pinprick subtlety of all the goodness chocked into these short stories. I read a few when they first appeared in the New Yorker, and Russell's so good that I didn't immediately catch on that some of her plot elements actually were not to be found on God's green earth (like the gigantic crab shells that a pair of young brothers rent to use as sand dune toboggans, or the slightly Uzbekistani tribe that sings the avalanche down every year). The title story, in p More...

0 comments like

Dec 16, 2009

Megan rated it:

Whimsical, innovative, these magical-florida short stories capture that dreamy-woozy creepy gator feel of a floridian night. 'Florid' is an appropriate description: some of these stories felt overstuffed, with too many ten dollar words to slog through. Although her ambition is obvious, sometimes it got in the way of the story. That SAID, the last story (aka the title track) was darn near perfect. Too specific to be an allegory, it showed rather than told the ways in which we all end up becoming More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 06, 2011

Dorine rated it:

Ok. So I picked this book of short stories for an English class in order to complete a book review requirement. Let me first say that I love English (the subject) and I really enjoyed the class with a crazy, but very interesting professor. I also learned that I'm not fond of short stories and this book really brought that feeling home. The characters in the stories were great, but the stories in and of themselves were depressing for the most part. Also, I'm not one to be left hanging. Is it just More...

0 comments like

Sep 12, 2011

Jack rated it:

Bizarre – the good kind. I’d read Karen Russell’s title story in an anthology of the year’s best short stories a half-decade ago. I still remember the smile and excitement of the story’s opening paragraph:

"At first, our pack was all hair and snarl and floor-thumping joy. We forgot the barked cautions of our mothers and fathers, all the promises we’d made to be civilized and ladylike, couth and kempt. We tore through the austere room, overturning dresser drawers, pawing th More...

0 comments like

Mar 16, 2011

Black Dog rated it:

Dual review from our blog:
Kim: Karen Russell is somewhat of a literary celebrity in the fact that she was one of the youngest writers to be chosen for the New Yorker’s Best 20 under 40. Her most recent novel, Swamplandia! is an extension of the first story we see in her book of short stories, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, about a family that makes their living wrestling alligators in a Florida Everglade theme park. If the premise of that story is any indication, Russell is cle More...

0 comments like

Feb 22, 2011

EZRead rated it:

This collection of shorts stories blew my imagination up like a grand finale 4th of July firework show. Karen Russell has created a fabulously romantic vision of America; where there are special camps to help children with sleeping problems and choirs of boys that sing down avalanches and little girls possessed by ghost boyfriends. Every story got a rowdy standing ovation from me. Vague fables with even vaguer lessons create these eccentric fairy tales; and the whole thing is more enjoyable than More...

1 comment like

Dec 25, 2010

Doug rated it:

Most of the ten stories in Russell’s debut collection share the same literary device: the unease and tension of emerging adolescent sexuality is mirrored by strangeness (supernature, surreality) in the external world. Russell has a knack for killer first sentences, like “My brother Wallow has been kicking around Gannon’s Boat Graveyard for more than an hour, too embarrassed to admit that he doesn’t see any ghosts” (”Haunting Olivia”); “Emma and I are curled together in the basket of the Thomas E More...

0 comments like

Jan 12, 2010

Entropic rated it:

I picked up this collection of short stories pretty much at random. It was on the shelf at the library next to where the Salman Rushdie book I was looking for wasn't, and I couldn't resist the title. It turned out to be quite a lovely find.

Most of the stories follow the same identifiable basic recipe: Russell's usual protagonist, usually a denizen of the Florida everglades region, is a child on the cusp of adolescence struggling to cope with the pressures of family and life in gener More...

0 comments like

Jan 12, 2012

Troy rated it:

First off, I still really did enjoy this book. But there were some issues with it, and I think the amount of acclaim Karen Russell has received so far makes people nervous to voice them. This is a very evocative, imaginative, colorful, poetic book. I did enjoy it. But many times I wanted to stop reading in frustration.

Almost all of these stories are about kids whose parents run some kind of impossible themed attraction. Or have some kind of insane parents. Almost all of them end in More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 15, 2011

Mark rated it:

I guess a 1 star rating deserves a little explanation- I am not into sci-fi, the parnormal and such...although I had so much trouble making sense of these stories I am not even sure what genre to classify them as. I don't want to say that this is a bad book, but rather a bad match for me personally. The stories, the dialouge and the plots all left me bewildered! good luck

I will read each story and review it here, and then come back later and rate and review the book as a whole.
More...

2 comments like