These ten extraordinary stories introduce a radiant new talent, as well as a world—the surreal marshes of the Florida Everglades—whose outlandish predicaments magically reveal the truth of our own lives.
In “Haunting Olivia,” two young boys make midnight trips to a boat graveyard in search of their dead sister, who set sail in the exoskeleton of a giant crab. In “Z. Z.’s Sleepaway Camp for Disord ered Dreamers,” a boy whose dreams foretell implacable tragedies is sent to a summer camp for troubled sleepers (Cabin 1, Narcoleptics; Cabin 2, Insomniacs; Cabin 3, Somnambulists…). In “Out to Sea,” Grampa Sawtooth is shipped off to a gated retirement community comprised of independently floating houseboats in a sea of man-made waves. In “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” the collection’s stunning title story, 15 girls raised by wolves are painstakingly reeducated by nuns.
A blazingly original voice, a dazzling debut, a thrilling discovery.
Reviews
“Already a master of tone and texture and an authority on the bizarre, Karen Russell writes with great flair and fearlessness. . . . The way Russell beds mundane detail in surrealist settings makes her work exceptionally evocative. . . . Russell’s astonishing gifts augur well for a novel of maturity and complexity. It’s only a matter of time.” —CARLO WOLFF, Denver Post
“How I wish these were my own words, instead of breakneck demon writer Karen Russell’s, whose stories begin, in prose form, where the jabberwocky left off. . . . Run for your life. This girl is on fire.” —SUSAN SALTER REYNOLDS, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Karen Russell is a storyteller with a voice like no other. . . . Laced with humor and compassion.” —LAUREN GALLO, People
“One of the strangest, creepiest, most surreal collections of tales published in recent memory. . . . Her writing bristles with confidence.” —JUNE SAWYERS, San Francisco Chronicle
“Twenty-five-year-old wunderkind Karen Russell . . . proves herself a mythologist of the darkest and most disturbing sort. . . . Ten unforgettable, gorgeously imaginative tales.” —JENNY FELDMAN, Elle
“The landscapes of Russell’s imagination are magical places. . . . A casual blend of insight and, well, whimmerdoodle. . . . The fablelike settings Russell invents throw the very real absurdity of childhood into relief. . . . Charming and imaginative. . . . One can sense Russell’s enthusiasm and playfulness, both of which she has in spades.” —FRANCESCA DELBANCO, Chicago Tribune
“Endlessly inventive, over-the-top, over-the-edge stories, all delivered in the most confident, exquisitely rambunctious manner. Fabulous fun.” —JOY WILILAMS
“With this weird, wondrous debut, 25-year-old Karen Russell blows up the aphorism ‘Age equals experience.’ She also suggests that ‘Write what you know’ is similarly useless, unless she’s acquainted with a girl living on a Florida alligator farm, two brothers who dive for the ghost of their dead sister, and children at a sleep-disorder camp. The stories in St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves are part Flannery O’Connor, part Gabriel García Márquez, and entirely her own.” —REBECCA ASCHER-WALSH, Entertainment Weekly
“Hallelujah! Karen Russell’s work sweeps the ground from beneath your feet and replaces it with something new and wondrous, part Florida swampland, part holy water. A confident, auspicious, uncomfortable debut.” —GARY SHTEYNGART
“Most writers her age haven’t yet matched Russell’s chief achievement: honing a voice so singular and assured that you’d willingly follow it into dark, lawless territory. Which, as it happens, is exactly where it leads us.” —CAROLINE MCCLOSKEY, Time Out New York
“This book is a miracle. Karen Russell is a literary mystic, channeling spectral tales that surge with feeling. A devastatingly beautiful debut by a powerful new writer.” —BEN MARCUS
“In spare but evocative prose, the 25-year-old conjures a weird world of young misfits and ghosts in the Everglades.” —JENNY COMITA, W Magazine
“A marvelous book in the tradition of George Saunders and Katherine Dunn.” —QUENTIN ROWAN, New York Post
“Karen Russell’s fresh and original voice makes this a stunning collection to savor.” —Pages
“Karen Russell’s startlingly original collection features graceful and seductive prose that transports the reader into surreal and yet utterly plausible realms.” —HARVEY FREEDENBERG, Bookpage
“Russell makes her sparkling debut with these 10 curious, sophisticated and whimsical stories.” —LINDSEYHUNTER, OK! Weekly
“This startingly original set of stories, which feels as though it might have been written by Lemony Snicket and Margaret Atwood, is not to be missed, and author Russell, whose fiction debuted in The New Yorker and who was chosen by New York magazine as one of ‘25 People To Watch Under 25,’ is poised to become a literary powerhouse.” —AMY FORD, Library Journal
“25-year-old wunderkind Karen Russell—whose house-afire prose has already lit up the pages of Granta and The New Yorker—proves herself a mythologist of the darkest and most disturbing sort. . . .Unforgettable, gorgeously imaginative tales. . . . With a flair for transforming common aspects of local culture—from gators to sand-sledding—into wondrous miracles, Russell also cuts straight to the heart of adolescence.” —JENNY FELDMAN, Elle
“Armed with a subversive sense of humor and a wicked turn-of-phrase, a young writer sets out to redefine the Southern gothic.” —BRENDAN LEMON, Interview
“This unusual, haunting collection confirms that the hype is well deserved. Like the people in Gina Oschner’s stories, Russell’s characters are caught between overlapping worlds—living and dead, primal and civilized, animal and human—and the adolescent narrators are neither children nor adults. . . . Unforgettable. Russell writes even the smallest details with audacious, witty precision. . . . Her scenes deftly balance mythology and the gleeful absurdity of Monty Python with a darker urgency to acknowledge the ancient, the infinite, and the inadequacies of being human. . . . Original and astonishing, joyful and unsettling, these are stories that will stay with readers.” —GILLIAN ENGBERG, Booklist (starred review)
“[Karen Russell] merges the satirical spirit of George Saunders with the sophisticated whimsy of recent animated Hollywood film. . . . Russell has powers of description and mimicry reminiscent of Jonathan Safran Foer . . . and her macabre fantasies structurally evoke great Southern writers like Flannery O’Conner.” —Publishers Weekly