Karen Russell is one of my favorite authors. She’s unbelievably creative, and I love how her stories come together at the ends. Usually, when I’m reading one of her short stories, I’m like, “Where is this going?” and then I suddenly get it. All of the pieces click together in an awesome way. The stories have a lot of humor and weirdness, but they also have a lot of depth. I’m rarely disappointed in them.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove is a collection of eight longish short stories. Like all short story collections, some of the stories are hits and others are misses for me. These are the four stories that stand out in my mind:

In “Proving Up,” a young boy confronts greed and death while he rides across the prairie to deliver a window to his neighbors.

In “The Barn at the End of Our Term,” former US presidents are not sure if they are in heaven or hell, but they do know that they have the bodies of horses.

“The New Veterans” is about a massage therapist who learns that she can alter her client’s memories by touching the tattoo that he got after he came home from war.

The final story that stands out is “The Graveless Doll of Eric Murtis.” This is my favorite in the collection. A group of school bullies discovers a scarecrow version of a boy they used to torment, but they have no idea who made the doll or why.

I like the themes of the stories in this collection. Many of the stories have to do with time, memory, and regret. If you could alter time, would you do it? If you suddenly found yourself in a vastly different body, how would you choose to live the rest of your life? Is it ethical to change a person’s sad memories to happy ones?

I didn’t like this collection as much as the author’s other collection, and I felt like a few of the stories dragged on a little too long, but if you’re a lover of magical realism, then this is a must-read. I highly recommend it.
 

I wasn't really impressed with this collection of short stories.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove: This was one of the stories I sort of liked. Interesting premise.

Reeling for the Emipre: This seems to be the favorite of a lot of people, but I couldn't get through it. Nothing grabbed me about it. I found the descriptions grotesque and then there's that whole white author writing characters of color thing that I'm not really into.

The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979: I also quit this story. I found the main character really unlikeable.

Proving Up: I thought this was the best story in the collection (except for the ending). That's probably because until the ending it's a pretty realistic story. Then the dark ending killed my enthusiasm for it.

The Barn at the End of Our Term: I didn't care for the premise of this one (presidents reincarnated as horses) so I skipped most of it.

Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating: This was another good one. It's entertaining, and I liked imagining all those optimists cheering for Team Krill. Only problem is the story doesn't go anywhere.

The New Veterans: I ended up skipping most of this story since I'm not into reading about people getting blown up. I liked the premise though and it seemed like the most complete story (beginning, middle, end).

The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis: I felt free to stop reading this story at the r-slur. There's something about a scarecrow and I don't really care.

In the end there were very few stories in this collection that kept me reading until the very end. I'm just not into Russell's particular aesthetic.

Karen Russell is one of the most talented and creative short story writers I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. The title story of this collection is one of my favorite short stories ever, and the rest of the collection does not disappoint.

In these quirky magical realism tales, boys frantically ice skate through artificial blizzards, fat girls get stuck inside giant seashells, and a teenager takes her ghost boyfriend to swamp prom. The stories feature young characters and are hilarious and heartbreaking. They blend vivid realism and wild imagination in a way that leaves the reader feeling slightly off-kilter.

Here are a few of the stand-out stories:

In “Haunting Olivia,” two brothers set out to find their sister after she floats away on a giant crab shell. This story perfectly blends humor and devastation.

In “Children’s Reminiscences of the Westward Migration,” a Minotaur pulls his wife and children across the plains in a covered wagon. This story took me a while to get into, but the characters are so strange that I ended up loving it.

As I already mentioned, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” is one of my favorite short stories ever. It’s about the nuns at St. Lucy’s Home and their attempt to turn a pack of wild wolfgirls into proper young ladies. This story is sad and weird and laugh-out-loud funny. The writing is brilliant. It’s definitely the best story in the collection.

It’s hard to come up with criticisms of this book, but I think a few of the stories went over my head a little. I didn’t feel like I totally understood their full meaning. Also, many of the characters in the stories are very similar. Every story features at least one precocious child, and I would have liked the kids to have more distinct personalities.

These are very minor criticisms. I highly recommend this book, especially if you’re in the mood for something unusual.

It is a special kind of homelessness, says our mayor, to be evicted from your dreams.

 

According to these professional Cassandras, sleep has been chased off the globe by our twenty-four hour news cycle, our polluted skies and crops and waterways, the bald eyeballs of our glowing devices. We Americans are sitting in an electric chair that we engineered.

 

-From the book

 

Sleep Donation is a novella that theorizes what our world might look like if faced with a disease of terminal insomnia. The CDC is searching for answers but no one knows exactly what causes it or why some people are affected and others aren't. A company called Slumber Corps collects sleep donations from the unaffected and distributes them to the sleep deprived. Instead of Red Cross vans collecting blood, there are Sleep Vans collecting hours of sleep.

Trish Edgewater works for the Slumber Corps. She is their best recruiter. Her sister died of insomnia before the sleep donation procedure was developed and Trish resurrects her ghost to persuade people to save others by donating their sleep. But Trish gradually becomes uncomfortable with the absolutes her company claims. And when Trish recruits (through her parents) Baby A, the first ever universal donor, she begins to question her beliefs even more. She starts to question the ethics of her bosses & their company.

This book was ok. I admit, I find novellas less appealing than full length novels. I prefer to get deeper into the story and world building. But, the story was interesting and it kept my attention. It was a creative and new idea. And the disease sort of made sense, with all the electronics and distractions, people do have trouble sleeping. What if there was a disease where you couldn't sleep at all. What lengths would people go to in an effort to find a cure? And what or who would they be willing to sacrifice?

I really wanted to see what would happen next. It felt like the whole story was building to something that you didn't get to see. So the end was a bit disappointing.

Recommended to:

If you like the quick pace of open ended novellas, then this would be a good book for you.

I can barely think about this except in opposition to The Tiger's Wife--I accidentally read them back-to-back, which really was a sad mistake. Not that Swamplandia! suffers in comparison: actually I think it's the better book, all things considered, and I feel bad for giving them the same rating and thinking about them as twins. It's just that I started it less than an hour after finishing the other and can barely untwine the two in my mind... So rather than a Proper Review, just a few notesy thoughts on this one.-Grief is a huge element in both books, and while TW was more austere and abstract about it, the raw pain in Swamplandia! resonated with me while TW left me rather cold. I loved how clearly the character of the missing mother came through for me even though her death is the catalyst for the whole story which is so real for how I understand grieving: it's all about grappling with the void left by a missing person while simultaneously feeling traces of them everywhere in your life, within and without. I thought that Russell conveyed this beautifully.-Characters! Loved Ava, loved the swamp and the alligators and the mother, sort of liked Kiwi even though I wasn't entirely sure that his sections strengthened the book (though I didn't feel that they were weak: just not the story I wanted to be reading), cold neutrality about Osceola and Chief, who were pale in comparison to Everyone Else. -The writing was often wonderful, with really exciting descriptions, but just as often lazy. Other reviewers have pointed out simple inconsistencies that are inexcusable from such a hyped author and lauded publisher. -Story is really where my enthusiasm flags into a muddle of mixed feelings. For most the book I was enraptured and very enthusiastic about characters, plot, setting. "It's like Geek Love without the unrootedness and sense of ick!" I thought. "Like George Saunders without the over-the-line macabre elements that often make his stories seem sort of shallow and shock-valuey to me!" It was like things that I've always wanted to like but couldn't without the flaws. And THEN it went there. It dropped sordid plot points and failed to address them or integrate them into the story. Shallow--it was unexpected and unaddressed, a huge glaring departure from the tone of the story. Lazy--it seemed less like an organically reached destination than a major authorial interference to get the intended melancholy flat-line of an ending. I'm not really one to get squeamish about Bad Things in my books but when they happen for no reason? And completely derail the plot and fizzle the ending? Bah. Once again, lost potential.