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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
dark
reflective
kinda hit-or-miss and mostly too vague for me to really get into but Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating rocks
Reality is sometimes seen most clearly through the lens of absurdity, a curious truth that’s brilliantly demonstrated by Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove. In each of her stories, characters scraping by in our workaday world are subjected to some bizarre twist: enslaved sweatshop laborers devolve into human silkworms, taunted schoolboys haunt their bullies in scarecrow form, memories are tattooed to one’s skin and then massaged from the mind. At a glance such surrealism may seem like the stuff of fantasy or science fiction, but Russell’s vignettes are all too down-to-earth. Her absurdities only warp our world in order to bring life’s harshness into focus.
In “The Barn at the End of Our Term,” former U.S. presidents are put out to pasture in horse-bodies, reduced to eating hay and drawing carriages. Are their new circumstances a degrading hell or a paradise of simple comforts and natural beauty? They’re too busy vying for positions of power within the farmyard to agree. Ultimately it seems they’re fenced in only by their obsession with power and legacy or, in Rutherford’s case, his longing for that which is hopelessly lost. They can only fly free in the world’s beauty if they accept at last that they’re just animals, silly animals confined within a larger system, pointlessly making up rules to which nature is indifferent—rather like humanity itself when we step back and consider our place in the cosmos.
The Nebraska homesteaders in “Proving Up” are similarly blinded by short-sighted obsessions, in their case a land deed that is symbolically important to their sense of self-worth but effectively inconsequential. Its artificial prestige has no bearing on the questions of life, death, and family that actually dominate their days. In theory the cluster of households on the frontier support each other in their shared survival, but as soon as they learn a government certificate is at stake, their lust for it drives them to steal, lie, and kill. Their only crop in that drought of comprehension is a field of bones.
I could go on—there are eight such stories in the collection. But I’ll cut myself short and just say that each one is brilliant in its own way—read them for yourself to draw your own conclusions.
One last note on Russell’s writing: I can’t help but compare Vampires to the other short story collections I’ve read recently. Tim Horvath’s Understories is pure fancy and wordplay; Ron Rash’s Something Rich and Strange is earnest dirt and suffering. Russell strikes a delicate balance between these poles and holds it throughout this collection, taking a dance step in either direction from one story to the next but always swinging back to center. The result is rich and readable and frankly delicious, but never saccharine... as disconcertingly tantalizing, perhaps, as the eponymous lemons. Again, I have to say: read them for yourself.
In “The Barn at the End of Our Term,” former U.S. presidents are put out to pasture in horse-bodies, reduced to eating hay and drawing carriages. Are their new circumstances a degrading hell or a paradise of simple comforts and natural beauty? They’re too busy vying for positions of power within the farmyard to agree. Ultimately it seems they’re fenced in only by their obsession with power and legacy or, in Rutherford’s case, his longing for that which is hopelessly lost. They can only fly free in the world’s beauty if they accept at last that they’re just animals, silly animals confined within a larger system, pointlessly making up rules to which nature is indifferent—rather like humanity itself when we step back and consider our place in the cosmos.
The Nebraska homesteaders in “Proving Up” are similarly blinded by short-sighted obsessions, in their case a land deed that is symbolically important to their sense of self-worth but effectively inconsequential. Its artificial prestige has no bearing on the questions of life, death, and family that actually dominate their days. In theory the cluster of households on the frontier support each other in their shared survival, but as soon as they learn a government certificate is at stake, their lust for it drives them to steal, lie, and kill. Their only crop in that drought of comprehension is a field of bones.
I could go on—there are eight such stories in the collection. But I’ll cut myself short and just say that each one is brilliant in its own way—read them for yourself to draw your own conclusions.
One last note on Russell’s writing: I can’t help but compare Vampires to the other short story collections I’ve read recently. Tim Horvath’s Understories is pure fancy and wordplay; Ron Rash’s Something Rich and Strange is earnest dirt and suffering. Russell strikes a delicate balance between these poles and holds it throughout this collection, taking a dance step in either direction from one story to the next but always swinging back to center. The result is rich and readable and frankly delicious, but never saccharine... as disconcertingly tantalizing, perhaps, as the eponymous lemons. Again, I have to say: read them for yourself.
With all of the build up, I expected a little bit more from this collection. The stories seemed to have a lot of potential but stopped short of being truly startling or unique. At times it seemed like she was trying a little too hard to be whimsical and left them flat.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Hits and miss for me. Reeling for the Empire is one of the best shorts I've ever read. On par with Liu's Paper Menagerie. Proving Up was another gem - so haunting that I had to reread it. And the Barn at the End of our Term was quite funny and surprisingly charming.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Karen Russell is an excellent writer, her writing style is so evocative and vivid. The stories themselves were incredibly compelling, I just really wanted more and more of each story. It's hard to choose a favourite, I felt very strongly towards almost all of them with only Antarctic tailgating feeling quite uninteresting, and frankly quite pointless. I genuinely love these stories, they're super creative and tap into otherworldly yet incredibly human experiences many endure.
Vampires in the Lemon Grove is hit-and-miss story telling. Out of the eight stories, two are confirmed hits: Reeling For The Empire and Proving Up, and two are definite misses, The Barn at the End of Our Term and Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating. The rest are middle-of-the-road. But even the misses can be considered worthy efforts. In every story the author is pushing the bounds of imagination, in fantastical ways. While the story of former presidents dealing with their reincarnation as horses stabled together in a barn didn't work for me as a story, the concept will probably stay with me forever. Overall, the volume is worth reading and I'll be coming back for more of this author's work.