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koreilly 's review for:
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
by Karen Russell
A collection of short stories is a precarious thing. Do you tie all the stories together with a connecting, theme or motif, or do you let them be disparate and stand on their own? What if some stories resonate with a readers while other stories in the same collection leave them cold? These are just the common problems of a short story collection, and while Karen Russell's amazing 'Vampires...' does suffer from some of these problems, when the stories shine, they shine so brightly as to make you put the book down and truly ponder what a great new talent Russell is.
I found the last two stories in the book (subsequently the two longest) to be the weakest, but the titular story and also the heart-breaking-ly fantastical "The Barn at the End of Our Term" were so raw, and beautiful that it made up for any flaws I found in the other stories.
So while the book is uneven, it's highs are higher than anything out there right now in short fiction. The magical realism genre is often considered a laborious, academic field but Russell injects it with the right amount of ethos to bring the sad, middle-aged vampires plight to life or the protagonist of "Barn..."'s hopeless longing that the stories truly touch you.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. If I were a prestigious award council (which I'm obviously not because I'm terrible at this) I would give the short story "Barn..." every award in my award cannon. The book is worth it for that story alone.
I found the last two stories in the book (subsequently the two longest) to be the weakest, but the titular story and also the heart-breaking-ly fantastical "The Barn at the End of Our Term" were so raw, and beautiful that it made up for any flaws I found in the other stories.
So while the book is uneven, it's highs are higher than anything out there right now in short fiction. The magical realism genre is often considered a laborious, academic field but Russell injects it with the right amount of ethos to bring the sad, middle-aged vampires plight to life or the protagonist of "Barn..."'s hopeless longing that the stories truly touch you.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. If I were a prestigious award council (which I'm obviously not because I'm terrible at this) I would give the short story "Barn..." every award in my award cannon. The book is worth it for that story alone.