#vampiresinthelemongrove

[curiosityboughtthebook]

Current read for my college class, and there's some amazing stories in here. It's always fun when college reads are entertaining! 🤗 #vampiresinthelemongrove #karenrussell #collegereading #collegethings #reading #englishmajor https://www.instagram.com/p/CnRxZGFrUGR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[yesbiffwritesthings]

Recommended for fans of Kelly Link who need something to hold them over until her next collection comes out--as their writing styles are very similar (although personally I'm partial to what Link does). Not recommended for those who want the mysteries to be solved, and the questions to be answered, and the loose ends to be tied up at the end of every story, as Russell leaves a lot of things up to the reader's imagination. Like any shortie collection, some are better than others, and a couple of these stories were kind of a slog to get through: "The New Veterans" is really long-winded and overly sentimental, and "The Barn at the End of Your Term" (a story about dead presidents being reincarnated as horses) was a ridiculous premise that offered very little payoff. Russell is at her best when she embraces the elements of horror ("The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis", "Proving Up"--the latter of which is the scariest story I've read in a while, which took me by surprise) or sci-fi ("Reeling For the Empire", about a group of caterpillar-women held prisoner in a factory and forced to produce silk from their bodies). Overall, a solid collection from a very good writer who is occasionally bogged down by not-so-great ideas. #vampiresinthelemongrove #karenrussell

[thelonelyrdr-blog]

Thoughts on Vampires in the Lemon Grove

(Warning: The following review contains spoilers - and some mild literary analysis.) I don't usually read short stories, mostly because, despite studying short stories in one of my two college capstone courses and serving as a first-pass judge in a short story contest last summer, I don't really "get" them. To be honest, I only settled for that capstone because there were no seats left in the fairy tale capstone, much like how I settled for being a judge in Philadelphia Stories' annual short story competition when I couldn't get an internship with them. I docked points from most of the stories with ambiguous endings, declaring their resolutions "unsatisfying," when in reality I probably just didn't understand them. To my credit, though, one of the stories that I reviewed favorably, "49 Seconds in the Box," did go on to win third place in the competition. However, I wouldn't recommend reading it if you've ever had a dog, or if you've ever even met a dog in your lifetime. Consider yourself warned. Getting back on topic, although I don't usually read short stories, I bought Karen Russell's short story collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, because its title caught my attention amidst the seemingly endless (web) pages of "buy 2, get the 3rd free" paperbacks on bn.com. (The other two books I purchased as part of that deal were Tell the Wolves I'm Home [see previous review] and Never Let Me Go [I'm reading it now, so stay tuned for a review!].) As an afterthought, I also considered that it might be good to read outside of my comfort zone. Expand my horizons and all that. I'm glad that I did. According to author Alena Graedon's guest editorial review on Amazon, the stories in Russell's collection are linked by the theme of metamorphosis. I didn't think about that while reading, but in retrospect, I'm not sure how I could've missed it. Human-silkworm hybrids, presidents reincarnated as horses, and a bullied boy returning as a scarecrow to haunt his tormentors are just a few of my favorite examples of inhuman human characters who undergo transformations in this book. Ironically, the titular story, "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," which inspired me to read the book in the first place, is probably one of the weakest in the collection, though I appreciated Russell's unique take on vampires and marriage between immortals; in particular, I liked the incongruity of supernatural characters dealing with a mundane human problem like a slowly dissolving marriage. (Imagine the irony in being immortal and realizing that the spark has gone out of your marriage because you and your partner have grown apart as you've "aged")! I can't forget Russell's hilarious one-line parody of old horror movies either ("'Help! ' she screams to a sky full of crows. 'He's not actually from Europe!'"). Unfortunately, as cleverly as Russell used her vampires, vampires appear so often in media that nothing she did with them would've surprised me. I predicted the direction the story would take early on, and as a result, the rest of it had no narrative urgency for me. "Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating" suffers from a lack of narrative urgency, too, perhaps because it has no narrative: it is, as the title would suggest, a list of rules rather than a story with a plot following traditional dramatic structure. I also didn't really care for "Proving Up," but then again, I'm biased against macabre short stories. (My distaste for the macabre doesn't extend to novels, though, or to anything written by Poe. Fun fact: the other capstone course I took in college focused on gothic literature, and my final paper for that class compared the use of the literary double in Poe's "William Wilson" and  Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Needless to say, I love me some Poe.)  Now that I've touched on what didn't work for me in this collection, let's talk about what did. My favorite aspect of these stories was their refreshing originality. Each story had its own unique conceit, setting, and voice, which probably accounted for my not noticing any interconnecting themes while reading. The stories I liked best were the ones I cited earlier as exemplifying the metamorphosis theme. Without completely spoiling them (I hope), I'll hint at what struck me most about each of them. With "Reeling for the Empire," it was the narrator, who differed from her companions in having freely relinquished her freedom rather than having it stolen from her, exhibiting a strength that later allowed her to reclaim her life and her identity in an empowering final scene.  A murder has never made me so gleeful. The story ended with just the right level of ambiguity, too: it felt emotionally and logically satisfying while still leaving me pondering where the narrator and her comrades would go and whether there were others like them elsewhere in Japan (or in the world). "The Barn at the End of Our Term" I liked for the absurdity of its premise, its humorous dialogue, and its strangely uplifting ending. I applaud Russell for making me cheer for a president I still know nothing about other than what few details of his life she reveals in the story. Which brings me to why I was so impressed with "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis": it actually made me empathize with a bully, and not just any bully, but a bully whose callous actions made my heart hurt and my lips tremble for his victim. Russell sure knows how to write a complex character. Her portrayal of adolescent male friendships seemed realistic, as well, although I’m probably not the right person to make that call, considering that I’ve never been an adolescent male. As thought-provoking as it is emotionally unsettling, this story constituted the perfect conclusion to Russell’s collection, though its individual conclusion was a bit too open-ended for my literal, poetry- and short story-shunning mind. Although it was not one of my favorite stories in the collection, I must also give credit to "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979"  for summarizing adolescence in one sentence: "That summer Nal was fourteen and looking for excuses to have extreme feelings about himself." ...Yeah, pretty much. In the interest of thoroughness, I suppose that I should also mention the one story that I've neglected, "The New Veterans," which is notable for suggesting that there is something selfish in the desire to help others - in particular, in the desire to empathize with others' pain. I'm not sure I agree with that viewpoint, but it's an interesting one to consider nonetheless. Yes, as a writer who struggles with coming up with viable story ideas, I was definitely impressed with Russell's versatile imagination. However, although the stories' hooks...well, hooked me, Russell's writing kept me on the line. Simply put, she writes like a woman in love with writing. Like the kind of writer I aspire to be. Her prose sings. I vaguely recall from my short story capstone that shorter forms, like poems and short stories, necessitate that writers practice what's called "economy of phrase" (at least I think that's what it's called). Short story writers don't have as much time or space as novel writers do to develop their ideas, so they have to squeeze as much as possible into every word and sentence. I wish I could give examples of economy of phrase in Vampires in the Lemon Grove, but sadly, I didn't write any down while reading, and I refuse to borrow from other reviews. Trust me, though, there were quite a few lines that I paused over to marvel at the image or emotion they evoked. English majors - and non-English majors whose love for words rivals or even surpasses that of English majors - this is the book for you. And perhaps poems and short stories are the writing forms for you. I don't know. I can only recommend what I've read, and as much as I enjoyed it, Russell's delightful hodgepodge of stories was both the first that I've read and probably the last that I'll read for a while. I'm sticking to novels, for the mere fact that I've never read a short story I wanted to live in. Still, I'm glad I read Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and I think that you should read it, too. (How is it that I liked this book less than Tell the Wolves I’m Home, yet I had more to say about it? Maybe Jane Austen was onto something with the whole “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more” thing.)