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 avoids some of the usual pitfalls of writing in the voice of another gender (pitfalls like overcompensation or resorting to the denouncement of cliches, which of course only confirm the cliches). Perhaps because Russell writes about young'uns who are screaming at their own bodies as they are at the world around them, she avoids the obvious and instead just gets to tackle the meaty stuff of identity and all that other razzmatazz.

If I had to offer anything about what kept me from fully diving into this book, I would say that a lot of the openings felt a little too formulaic--a tendency to throw out a bunch of proper names and mysterious circumstances, I guess to try to entice with mystery, but I found the technique a little alienating and left me confused rather then engaged for a page or three. Once over that, though, I got my teeth into quite a few of these stories.

I'd also say that Russell's more fantastic stories were a little less convincing. Plotting the capture of baby sea turtles and an annual event of a children's choir to set off an avalanche are challenging yet accessible, but the situation of the title story (though it had the best opening), left me at a little too much distance throughout.

Best stories, by my estimation: "Haunting Olivia," "Star-Gazer's," "City of Shells" and "Accident Brief." And, I'm slating myself for her next book.