St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories

by Karen Russell

book data

821 ratings, 3.84 average rating, 243 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		28%
4		37%
3		24%
2		7%
1		1%

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published

September 5th 2006 by Knopf

binding

Hardcover, 256 pages

isbn

0307263983 (isbn13: 9780307263988)

description

A dazzling debut, a blazingly original voice: the ten stories in St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves introduce a radiant new talent.

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Collections of Short Stories

177 books | 95 voters

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1,445)

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10/02/07

Brandy rated it:

(review of isbn 0307276678)

bookshelves: 2008reads, collections-anthologies, speculative-fiction

Read in January, 2008

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

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01/05/08

Julia rated it:

Man, this was a tough book for me to read. Russell was 25 or 26 when this came out, a graduate of the Columbia MFA program and a protege of Ben Marcus. A world I used to orbit a little, but was effectively cast out of when I left Columbia and then NYC (and he rejected me from his program). I tried to really hard to read this book nonjudgmentally and although I may not have always been successful, I've come to the following conclusions...

I admire Russell's imagination. There are some ...more

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06/27/07

oriana rated it:

(review of isbn 0701181184)

bookshelves: read-2007, the-new-new-new-new-thing

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

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3 comments

08/22/07

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

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02/20/09

Trin rated it:

bookshelves: american-lit, shortstories

Read in February, 2009

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 p...more

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2 comments

11/19/07

Paul rated it:

Read in January, 2007

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.

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11/05/08

Kim rated it:

Read in February, 2009

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

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06/15/07

Laughinggoddess rated it:

recommends it for: Winterson fans, readers who like the slightly odd or coming-of-age stories, Florida lovers

My favorite story had to be the last one, which shares its name with the title. It is a heartbreaking account of what it means to be cultivated into adulthood, leaving the wild ways behind. Mirabella nearly made me cry.

As many people have already noted, these are a collection of coming-of-age stories, noting the painful, confused period of adolescence where no one seems to know the rules (or everyone knows the rules but you).

I certainly enjoyed some stories more than oth...more

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06/05/08

Nicole rated it:

Read in June, 2008

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

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04/11/08

sarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0307276678)

Read in April, 2008

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

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05/04/07

Megan rated it:

Read in October, 2007

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

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02/22/09

Aerin rated it:

bookshelves: fiction-literature

Read in February, 2009

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...more 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 pudgy pink hands pull at her short, unkempt hair. I knew how she felt.

The author of the collection of short stories is the rather beautiful wunderkind Karen Russell, who was 25 years old at the time of printing. I didn’t expect much, but having recently entered a short story contest, I realized how little I knew about crafting a short story. And how I really don't like short stories. With a penitent heart, I took the book home and began to read.

In the ten stories, Russell whisks us away to the darker side of the Florida Everglades and to the plains of the Old West and to an Eskimo ice cap. She lovingly presents characters grotesque and disturbing, who act in grotesque and disturbing ways. Families run theme parks for wrestling alligators or exploiting Giant Conch shells, brothers seek their sister’s ghost in underwater caves, orangutans perform at an ice rink, and, yes, wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns.

These stories may be surreal, but what’s far more astonishing is Russell’s magic with words. Russell unabashedly expects the best of the English language and refuses to settle for less. Her phrasing is orgasmic.

Now the thunder makes the thin window glass ripple like wax paper. Summer rain is still the most comforting sounds I know. I like to pretend that it’s our dead mother’s fingers, drumming on the ceiling above us.

I shadow the spirit manatees, their backs scored with keloid stars from motorboat propellers. I somersault through stingrays. Bonefish flicker around me like mute banshees.

Somewhere, an Avalanche is about to happen without us. Rangi must know this before I do, and the dead bear in eyes comes racing towards us across old snow.

And sometimes, if she sits long enough, it happens. Beneath the hum of her own blood, beneath the hum of the world itself, she thinks she can hear the faint strains of another song. It’s a red spark of sound, just enough to cast acoustic shadows of the older song that she has forgotten.

Words fail me to describe this book. I grasp at adjectives like “satisfying,” “complex,” “ bizarre.” Russell’s book is the reason the word “phantasmagorical” exists. I think about sucking your own blood from a paper cut or pouring salt on a slug. Reading St. Lucy’s is like drinking a glass of thick, perfectly aged red wine and being fully sated in both hunger and thirst.

This is a book writers should read, readers should read, adventurers should read. It’s not for the timid, but neither is it for the fearless. It’s for all of us who are in between.

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11/24/08

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

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06/10/09

Meredith Enos rated it:

Read in June, 2009

So I read a bunch of the reviews here before posting my own, mostly to answer the question, “Is it just me?” Thankfully for me, and not so much for Ms. Russell, it’s not. Yes, clever premises for the stories. Yes, the stories are told beautifully, words and pacing.

But also yes, the themes and voice and character types are repetitive (the parents seem to function only to make the children angry because of their absence), even if set in wildly differently places. Yes, the storie...more

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08/23/07

sandy rated it:

bookshelves: never-finished

Read in August, 2007

All the stories in this book have bits of magic in them. It is very unique in that way, and definitely a fresh voice. I was disappointed because I had so much loved "Haunting Olivia," the story published in the New Yorker, and so have kept my eye out for Karen Russell ever since. I had found the story incredibly compelling. The other stories varied in quality, but in my mind did not measure up. The story that the title is based on was good as well.

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03/02/09

Andrea rated it:

(review of isbn 0307276678)

bookshelves: 2009-books-read, books-reviewed, writer-s-conference, young-adult

Read in March, 2009

In recent news, I have finished another writer’s conference book. I finished Saint Lucy’s Home for Girls Who Were Raised By Wolves by Karen Russell. I enjoyed the book - which is collection of short stories. I am a little bit of a book snob and I don’t usually read short story collections. Mostly because I feel like I just get into a story and I start liking the characters and getting caught up in the plot and then the story is over. As a result, I did have a few irrationally angry mo...more

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04/15/08

Sam rated it:

(review of isbn 0701181184)

Oh, she has promise: she can write good sentences, good paragraphs, good pages, even good beginnings and middles and man, oh man, i'd kill to have had some of her ideas first, and she does good voices (and very probably she's getting better and better at it as we speak)--

--but why can't she ever write an ending that isn't your generically open-ended ending?

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07/17/07

laura rated it:

Read in July, 2007

Hmm, it was an okay little book of fantastical short stories. Not my favorite but not awful either....just so/so. Note that according to the book jacket she is one of the top 25 people under 25 to watch...or some such nonsense

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09/06/08

Michael rated it:

Read in September, 2008

Brilliant collection of short stories. Some very much felt like classics your parents were afraid to tell you. The settings were always lush and often the stories were grim. I loved it.

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