From the author of the novel Swamplandia!—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best.
Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.
Named a Best Book of the Year by:
The Boston Globe
O, The Oprah Magazine
Huffington Post
The A.V. Club
A Washington Post Notable Book
An NPR Great Read of 2013
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Amazon Guest Review of “Vampires in the Lemon Grove,” by Karen Russell
By Alena Graedon
Alena Graedon was born in Durham, North Carolina, and is a graduate of Brown University and the Columbia MFA program. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her first novel is The Word Exchange.
The characters in this numinous, electrifying, brilliantly imaginative collection undergo monstrous and miraculous transformations. Vampires morph from old Italian grandfathers to bats to vampires again. Boys turn into mute, mutant scarecrows. Girls metamorphose into kaiko-joko: silkworm caterpillars and slaves.
As these changes take place, the line between human and inhuman can seem vanishingly faint. But there are also subtler kinds of transmutations. Bad-luck boys reinvent themselves, with the help of hair dye and rapacious birds who hoard human destinies as scraps in an old tree.
Having the chance to visit each variegated world that Russell conjures—and the sublime words she uses to describe them—is more than reason enough to read these eight very moving, often very funny stories. But the thing that makes them especially mesmerizing and powerful is how profoundly human Russell’s monsters seem.
Implanted in each of their shape-shifting bodies are very familiar things: bloodlust, hunger, superstition, devastating memories, fictions we tell ourselves to go on living. But also buried inside are secret selves, strength, love, salvational creativity. For the characters to transform, these things often have to be wrenched out of them. And these extractions can lead not just to metamorphosis but sometimes to a sort of fusion.
At its best, reading, too, is a kind of fusion. Reading these stories, I felt as if many other lives, monstrous and human, had been poured into mine. But they also stirred my own thoughts and memories, creating something new. In the process, like Russell’s characters, I felt transformed.
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. From the author of the novel Swamplandia!a finalist for the Pulitzer Prizecomes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the authors gifts at their inimitable best. Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a familys disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.Named a Best Book of the Year by:The Boston GlobeO, The Oprah MagazineHuffington PostThe A.V. ClubA Washington Post Notable BookAn NPR Great Read of 2013 Six short stories with subjects ranging from a dejected teenager who discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left behind in a seagull's nest to two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove who try helplessly to slake their thirst for blood. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780307947475
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