St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories (2006) by Karen Russell

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories (2006)

 by Karen Russell 

Everglades, Florida

Florida: 15/21

  I wish editor Susan Straight had picked Swamplandia- which I think is a book length version of one of the short stories in this volume (also called Swamplandia).  Straight has a fondness for the short story collection that I do not share, though they fit in nicely with the theme of the 1,001 Novels project in that each collection of stories presents something like 10 different perspectives/locations/etc instead of one set up.   I just feel like with short stories I can hardly be expected to have a connection to ten different situations when it takes me 20 minutes to get through each one.  The approach that I see most frequently is either to restrict the review to a single paragraph and make it a thematic review with some story DETAILS or for a longer wrtie up, you talk about 2 or three separate stories and try to situate the style of the writer in the context of other, better-known writers of short stories. 

  Near as I can tell, Russell favors the swamps imbued with magical realism. With many of the individual stories containing more than a whiff of whimsy.   Russell would probably say she is influenced by folk tales, I'm guessing.  I would have rather read one of her novels instead.