And Other Stories (Vintage Contemporaries) - Vampires in the Lemon Grove

The first two stories of this book were really interesting to read... but both (along with all the following stories) just sort of abruptly end. I know these are short stories, but it felt like the author just didn't know what the point of her stories were or how to end them, so she just stopped writing. The writing itself has some solid passages, and it does transport you. But then it ends and you're left wondering what the point of it was. Again the first two stories are pretty cool and you can find some meaning to them, it's all the filler stories that follow. I almost never abandon a book, but I did about 3/4 of the way done with this one. Get this at the library for free-- don't spend your money on it!

A couple of really great stories, like the President's reborn as horses and what they needed to learn and the one about the girls who become silk worms. But the rest weren't that interesting, and I thought the title story was the weakest. Can't account for individual taste, I guess. Not a keeper.

All the stories fell a little flat for me, accept one. The best story in the book was Reeling for the Empire. It is such a fantastic short story. However, none of the other stories were memorable to me.

Though at times a little drawn out, this wildly imaginative collection is entertaining and thought-provoking. I remain unclear as to the intended message of the book though I feel certain there was one intended.

Title and the excerpt i read prior to purchasing were interesting. Long winded short stories that left me wanting some resolution. Call me old school. Ended up skimming the last two stories. May appeal to some but I would encourage reading more than several pages (my mistake) prior to purchase.

The stories in this book are incredibly creative, and Karen Russel's writing is immediately accessible and gravitational. There are passages I read over and over agin for the sheer joy of it. A few moments in different stories seemed unmatched for the characters, a bit unbelievable, but that is all personal experience and may be completely untrue for another reader. Karen is a new favorite of mine. I'm off to buy Swamplandia.

I read this book mostly because of the very positive reviews it's gotten in a variety of sources. I agree that the writing is very good, at times hypnotic; the stories, however, range from bizarre to deeply creepy, and actually made me happy to turn the last page. Rod Serling would have loved them - me, not so much.

Ms. Russell is an inventive, skilled, and confident writer. I'm moving on to "Swamplandia". Thanks, Ms. Russell. You are no longer a book title I recommend, forgetting the author's name. I will tell friends and family to read Karen Russell!

Where do stories like these come from?
Karen Russell's originality is matched by her sharp writing and spot- on characterizations. I loved every story in this collection. Full pleasure for readers who enjoy originality coupled with superb execution of the short story art form.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories (2014) Karen Russell

Not for me. Everything that is wrong with writing, literature, education, publishing in America is embodied here. You might like it, though. “Even on a nonscarecrow day I dreaded this, the summative pressure of the good-bye moment— but now it turned out there was nothing to say.”
(p. 216). Karen Russell, Columbia MFA graduate. The word ‘summative’; as it’s used here, serves no purpose other than to announce - I have an advanced degree in verbosity. A series of clever, sometimes witty, sentences strung together – with no meaning other than verbosity. Strung together in a way that makes no sense, if you consider them in the aggregate, other than, maybe, as some outlet for Russell’s muddled mind—thoughts go unfinished, dreams dangle, events / occurrences /descriptions can be, and sometimes are, un-related. It’s almost gibberish. Perhaps they’re there just because it occurred to the author at the time of the writing. There is no glue, other than subjects and predicates, and modifiers, often misplaced, misused. There are haphazard metaphors and similes galore. I’d find myself reading faster and faster to get to the end, hoping (always unrewarded) that something interesting or thought provoking would emerge, it never did. There was one very good story, “The New Veteran.” That story is worth reading and shows that Russell could be a good writer, maybe.

I am of the camp that writing is thinking. Writing helps to clarify thought. So what is it that you’re thinking? What is the meaning of that which you are thinking? Is it purposeful? Are you curious about something? Do you have something to say, a point? Can you articulate it in words that I can understand? Or, are you writing for amusement, entertainment – for yourself, others? Are you a jester? So you’re writing for your supper, so to say. So this is the purpose of all the MFA Creative Writing programs in higher education – to provide income for the teachers, the schools (administrators); and perhaps, down the road, for some of the students, the clients. So it is in the end a jobs program for entertainment of the masses; and not, to enhance critical thinking. Okay. But there are too many books, too much amusement, too much entertainment. Too much confusion and muddled thinking. This book of stories is but one of thousands. It adds little. Off with her head! Two of five stars.
Spring 2015

I read all the stories in this installment. The author is creative and has a wonderful imagination but, her work is just not my style. With the exception of "The New Veterans", "Reeling for the Empire" and perhaps one or two others, her endings left me frustrated and somewhat confused. I was previously aware that this is typical of her writing and am glad that I took the opportunity to experience it for myself. If you are like me and prefer more definitive plot resolutions in your fiction, look elsewhere.

I have not read Swamplandia, but I absolutely loved this collection: these stories blend magic realism, humor, and satire and are very original. Two of them were selected for Best American Short Stories--which is quite an accomplishment for a debut collection. The writing is gorgeous, I strongly recommend this collection.

The stories are whimsical and fantastic but too fatalistically miserable. After reading 5 of the stories I couldn't face another one. All of them end dismally and there is no lesson learned, no healing achieved and no insight save for self-punishment deserved. I think the stories show too much fascination with seeing exactly how much pain can be inflicted upon the main character. I can just read reports of actual torture victims if i want to pursue the truth of human cruelty and folly.

I bought this book because of several positive reviews and I'm really disappointed. None of the stories has an ending that lets you know what happened but also none of the characters is really interesting enough so you want to ponder and imagine your own ending. The word usage has a nice tone to it but you get the feeling that the author was putting too much energy into making something hipster cool instead of just telling a story.

"The Lemon Grove" is an inventive group of short stories. There are some real gems in this collection. It is one of those books that defy genre categorization. Russell's style is very literary though you certainly don't have your feet planted in the everyday world. There are elements of fantasy and science fiction and horror. Also, she has a knack for putting sentences and thoughts together in an individual way. Here are a few examples: "{She} read books and moved through the world as if she were afraid her footsteps might wake it." "Outside of my mind I can barely see." "He's a rumor...he's smoke..." These are a few examples. At a certain point I put my pencil down and just read.

There's a winged motif running through most of these stories if, at times, only on the periphery...bats, seagulls, moths even angels. These multiple references to flying tie in with the fanciful nature of Russell's writing. There's also sadness. She confronts loss, unrequited love, a warrior's battle scars, and unknown unknowable evil, evil that's made worse for being undefined, etc. Though all these stories have merit I found them uneven. `Proving Up' was positively creepy as was `The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis' and `Reeling for the Empire' read like an allegory. All of them were beyond normal happenings but there was something fundamentally true and human in them. The supernatural aspects in Russell's writing reminded of Shirley Jackson. Russell's tone often had William Trevor's emotional intensity where evil seems to hover just outside reality. The best stories in this collection were immensely satisfying which made those that were less so seem more starkly lacking though probably if I'd encountered them elsewhere I wouldn't have felt this so strongly. This book is an adventure.

(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. However, 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 paperbacks for sale online. As an afterthought, I also considered that it might be good to read outside of my comfort zone. Expand my horizons and all that.

According to author Alena Graedon’s guest editorial review on the store, 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.

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 these.

I've only discovered Karen Russell in the past year. First, by reading Swamplandia! and then with her novella Sleep Donation. As I continue to make my way through her previous works, I realize increasingly that I'm witnessing the emergence of one of America's best young writers and it's been fun to work through her writings, essentially in reverse. What I'm increasingly struck by is her brilliance at such a young age. It leaves me excited to think about what she is capable of producing in the future.

If you've yet to read anything from Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove is a wonderful place to start, and if you have read her, this book is a great place to continue. This collection of 8 short stories left me amazed at the power of her imagination, beginning with the title story of an aged vampire. Is there a genre more played out than that of the vampire? Doubtful. But Russell managed such a fresh take on the topic as to make it interesting and entertaining. A vampire named Clyde who has learned from his wife (who also happens to be the only other vampire he's ever met) that many of the behaviors he thought were required of a vampire (sucking blood for one) are just silly traditions or wives tales. They've discovered together that the sucking on the lemons that grow in an old Italian orchard quench and keep at bay the former lust for blood and killing. What ensues is a story quite unique and worthy of your time.

Another couple of favorites were "Proving Up" an increasingly fear inducing tale of mid-western settlers trying very hard to fulfill the government's requirements to become the owners of their land, and "Reeling for the Empire" which is so quirky, it's hard to give a quick description. Its recounting of the exploitation of a group of poor Japanese girls is perhaps the most haunting of all the book's stories.

In the vein of George Saunders, Russell's stories in this collection tend to be foreboding, and I read each with that wonderful angst that only a great writer can induce. The creativity, imagination, and ability to give some meaning to situations that at first feel absurd is part of Russell's genius, and it's on full display in this fantastic collection. I highly recommend Vampires in the Lemon Grove to any lover of the short story format. It will not disappoint.

The most annoying thing about this collection of short stories is, the two best stories are at the end.That is a problem because there is a pretty good chance you will stop reading before you get to them.Russell is a good prose stylist and a very imaginative writer.She is not all that interested in telling stories or in developing characters.You can produce a good story without that but it's hard.It appears that these stories were written under the influence of Robert Aickman and that's not good news.The more I read Aickman and the more I think of his writing , the more firmly I become convinced that he was a literary genius of some sort.His genius was very idiosyncratic and I suspect he's not a good writer to try to imitate.Aickmans stories tend to be incomprehensible and at the end ,you may not know what happened.Russell does that as well but with her it falls flat.She doesn't produce the unsettling effect that Aickman usually creates.Your main reaction is liable to be ,so what ?

The first story in the book is the much praised titular story.Russell does a great job creating atmosphere, and that's all she does.The characters aren't at all interesting and the story is negligible.It's about vampires, dull vampires.Some readers may say, what you want her to be Anne Rice ! Well Russell is definitely a better stylist than Rice , who at her worst is absolutely awful.However at her best(Interview with the Vampire), Rice is a good story teller who creates compelling characters.Russell might do better trying to learn a little from a comparatively crude writer like Rice than trying to imitate a writer as tricky and subtle as Aickman.The next story is about human silk worms and it is imaginative and kind of boring.After that we get California teenagers and a magical seagull ( the best parts of which are the realistic scenes dealing with teenagers- forget the magic),some boring twaddle set in the old west, a cute story about horses who are reincarnations of American presidents( that if you read it in a magazine - you'd say -cute - not much to it), some dribble about tailgating in Antarctica and finally the books two best stories.What distinguishes these stories is , they have characters that exist off the page and tell moderately interesting, rather strange tales( a little Ray Bradbury here).

Reading this book is a good reminder of something that should not be forgotten.Read critical reviews with skepticism .Sometimes the critics are so eager to anoint a new star, standards slip. .

This is a collection of eight short stories. Most of them have fantasy elements, although the book is marketed as mainstream fiction. In the title story, a pair of old vampires (one named “Clyde”) have discovered that they really do not need to drink blood to survive but instead develop a taste for fresh lemons grown in Italy. My favorite story in the collection is “Reeling for the Empire”, in which young 19th Century Japanese women are sold into some sort of slavery and become some sort of female/silkworm hybrid. In “The Barn at the End of our Term”, U.S. presidents are reincarnated as horses with Rutherford B. Hayes as the point of view character. In “Proving Up”, homesteaders in 19th Century Nebraska share a single window. In “The Graveless doll of Eric Mutis”, a group of bullies find a doll resembling one of their victims. In “The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979”, a young boy finds that the seagulls are collecting items from his future. In “The New Veterans”, a massage therapist learns she can help an Iraq War veteran with his PTSD by absorbing his memories. In “Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating”, whales feeding on krill becomes a kind of spectator sport. I liked most of the stories.

Short stories remind me of the TV show, The Twilight Zone, I mean that in the best way… And in the worst way.
At their best short stories, and The Twilight Zone, provide a quick, concise, entertaining and meaningful experience. It gets to the point and that point can make you laugh or shock you or deeply touch you.
Then there are those times when it's near great but leaves me wanting more. And there are times when something somehow seems unfinished. And some are just a wreck, you keep reading like you're watching an accident you're powerless to stop.
Karen Russell is very much in Twilight Zone territory in her subject matter here. She has a marvelous voice, I could "listen" to her narrators and characters all day, although it sometimes sounds incongruous coming out of the mouths of few of the people here.
In art, as in life, the beginnings and endings are the hardest part. Russell knows how to start a story, and the middle, again as in life, usually takes care of itself. Less than half of the eight stories here felt complete and satisfying to me. For some I wanted more and some were... Well at least they were short.
I look forward to reading more of her work, but maybe not more of her short stories.

I heart Karen Russell so much. If that sounds like a preface to a bad review, well, it kind of is. But not really.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove is composed entirely of short stories that have been published in other magazines. They are wonderful stories; they just don't necessarily make for a thematically coherent collection.

That being said, the stories in this collection explore Russell's typical themes: the futility of hope, atonement for past mistakes, loss of innocence that maybe was never even there, and taking responsibility for your actions even if they're not really entirely your fault.

All the stories have some element of the fantastic. Vampires feed off lemons. Japanese girls are transformed into human silkworms. Seagulls steal items from the past, present, and future and store them in a hidey-hole in a tree. A bullied kid may or may not have been reincarnated as a scarecrow. And Rutherford B. Hayes being reincarnated as a horse. How many times have you heard THAT story before?

My two favorite stories in this collection are "Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating," which is genius humor, and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" which is a brutal story about a group of bullies, and one who feels guilty for what he did.

The rest are great. "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979" deserves honorable mention, as does "Proving Up" for being Russell's attempt at a straight-up horror story. And "The Barn at the End of the Term" is just genius. Presidents reincarnated as farm animals. Is that sheep my wife?

`Vampires in the Lemon Grove' is a collection of eight stories of magical realism. As with all story collections, some work better than others. The title story was nice but didn't do much for me; the one I liked least was the very odd- but not in a good, creepy way- `Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating' in which the spectator sport of watching whales eat krill is taken to the levels of American pro football fans. It was a funny idea, but it was too long by half.

The second best of the book, I feel, is `The Barn at the End of our Terms', in which deceased American presidents find themselves reincarnated as horses. With Rutherford B. Hayes as the main protagonist, they wonder why, and how, and some of them set out to escape. It's a sad but humorous tale. The very best, though, is the horrific `Reeling for the Empire', in which young Japanese girls go to work at a silk factory, only to find themselves given an odd tea and trays of mulberry leaves and locked in a large room. They find themselves transformed into human silk machines, each day hooked up to reeling machines that take it out of their bodies- thankfully, the author does not go into great detail about his aspect! But though prisoners, they discover a way to regain the freedom they'd thought to find by moving to work in the factory. It's a very satisfying story, and I came to love the protagonist.

All in all, it's a worthwhile read, with more hits than misses.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove is Karen Russell's second collection of short stories, coming on the tail of her Pulitzer Prize nominated Swamplandia!. Collected in just under 250 pages are eight magical stories involving characters any reader would love to get to know.

In the title story, Vampires in the Lemon Grove two vampires have traveled the world attempting to stay under the radar of humanity. The story finds them in Italy, living inside a lemon grove, drinking the juice to satiate their thirst for blood. There is also the tale of a young man who must carry the only glass window in his community from house to house so each family can finally make just claim to their land.

The best story in the collection though, in this reviewer's opinion, is Reeling for the Empire. Young women are sold from their families to reel silk. Instead, the girls are slowly turned into giant silkworms, and forced to produce their own silk. When they get fed up, a revolution is planned, and they young women take their lives back by force.

All of the stories collected in Vampires in the Lemon Grove are exceptional. Many writers attempt magical realism, but few succeed the way Karen Russell can. Her writing is tight, her characters instantly lovable, and, most importantly, her stories are believable.

A collection of atmospheric stories in a range of genres. There is real fantasy and creativity here, and some sentences where the words are juxtaposed in startling and enjoyable ways. It's clear from the other reviews that everyone feels differently about the stories.

The stories I didn't like: 'Vampires' had promise but I hoped for more of a resolution; 'Seagulls' felt bleak and somewhat derivative; 'Proving Up' seemed to be going somewhere, but had exposition amidst action, and devolved into outright horror; 'Antarctic Tailgating' was funny but felt out of place in this collection. The stories I liked: 'Reeling' had an interesting premise and setting, and a satisfyingly resolved dramatic arc; 'The Barn' may have had the strangest premise, but to me this story had the most luminous ending; 'New Veterans' worked well as a short story, it had emotional resonance, and echoes of Bradbury's 'Illustrated Man'; 'Graveless Doll' reminded me, like 'Seagulls', of other writers, but I felt it was the better executed of the two.

There is a good chance you will find something here for you, even if it is only the pleasure of the unexpected.

I hadn't read anything by Karen Russell before (the mixed reviews of Swamplandia suggested an overhyped young author), but thought I'd check out this collection of short stories.

The pieces all have the kind of whimsical-but-serious premises you'll recognize if you've ever opened a copy of McSweeney's or listened to a song by The Decemberists. A vampire in a state of ennui is hung up on behaving in stereotypical vampire ways, even though his vampire girlfriend has assured him it's not necessary to drink blood or fear the sun. Seagulls bring objects that alter the life of a teenager in 1970s Australia, and reflect his mixed admiration and jealousy towards his older brother. Girls in a 19th century Japanese mill are biochemically transformed into human silkworms, but later stage an unprecedented work stoppage. A massage therapist finds that her fingers can alter the memories -- and past -- of a young Iraq War veteran, but not without cost. President Rutherford Hayes is reincarnated as a horse, in a barn housing other former US presidents (or at least popular caricatures of them) who are now horses, and frets that his former wife may be a nearby sheep.

Most pieces evoke a mood that's an enjoyable mix of absurd, wry, poignant, unsettling, and haunting. Russell has a gift for artful physical description and crafting voices. The skillful cast of voice actors who performed the audiobook probably deserve part of the credit for that, too.

However, there's a sense of a natural stylist still finding her feet in other departments. The two duds (IMO) were the krill vs. whales piece that tried for laughs, but came off more like a Dave Barry column with f-bombs, and one that had a teenage bully of a protagonist who was a little too unconvincing for me. I wouldn't have minded had she pushed her more "unfinished" endings a little further -- I think ambiguity is a delicious ingredient, but teaspoons, Ms. Russell, not tablespoons.

Still, if you're a fan of magic realism in the same vein as Kelly Link's fiction, you'll probably enjoy this book. Russell's talent might have yet to reach its full bloom, but it's well on the way.

3.5 stars

Writing in the New York Times on February 15, 2013, Leslie Kaufman identified a "resurgence" in short story collections, "driven by a proliferation of digital options that offer not only new creative opportunities but exposure and revenue as well." Among the new collections Kaufman cited to make her point was Karen Russell's VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE. Whether or not there is a renewed interest in short fiction, it's certain that the work of a writer of Russell's scope and daring will be noticed. In this second collection, she demonstrates an impressive breadth of subject matter and the same flair for the unconventional that brought her 2006 collection, ST. LUCY'S HOME FOR GIRLS RAISED BY WOLVES, such critical acclaim.

Of fiction, Russell has said it "helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive." That ethos surges through the best stories in VAMPIRES. It's perhaps best displayed in "Reeling for the Empire," the chilling tale of a group of young Japanese women who are sold by their fathers into service at the "Nowhere Mill" in the late 19th century. There they fall victim to a terrifying transformation brought about by a "tea that turns girls into silkworms." The plan that the suddenly self-empowered women construct to end their ordeal is devilishly ingenious.

The title story, far from trying to capitalize on the current literary lust for vampire tales, upends the conventions of the genre, especially when the narrator, Clyde, discovers that vampire bloodlust is a myth. "If we didn't have to drink the blood, then what on earth were these fangs for?" he asks. It's an emotionally rich story of the tensions in his enduring relationship with his wife Magreb, with whom he has lived everywhere from Salamanca to Cincinnati. The pair find themselves in an Italian lemon grove, where Clyde discovers that "lemons are a vampire's analgesic."

In the two stories that conclude the collection, Russell demonstrates her skill at transforming what might be fairly conventional narratives of contemporary life --- the psychological problems of returning Iraq War veterans and teenage bullying --- into odd and dramatically original treatments of those subjects. In "The New Veterans," Beverly, a massage therapist in a small Wisconsin town, becomes obsessed with the tragic story depicted in a tattoo on the back of the veteran whose stress she's been hired to relieve. As their sessions proceed, she wonders, of his terrifying memories, whether "she really can adjust them from without." "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" explores the emotional reckoning experienced by one of the members of a group of middle school boys who have inflicted a series of savage beatings on a hapless boy they call the "Mutant" when, following his unexplained disappearance, he returns in the form of a scarecrow.

The stories "The Barn at the End of our Term" and "Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating" offer a taste of Russell's wit, but they feel slight by comparison to their companions. In the former, the spirits of deceased presidents of the United States inhabit the bodies of horses, where they "reminisce about their political opponents like old lovers" and "are still hungry for power." The latter is a mildly amusing send-up of our passion for spectator sports, expressed in a whimsical formulation of rules for watching the "Food Chain Games" between Team Krill and Team Whale in -89˚F cold.

In a "By the Book" interview with the New York Times Book Review, Russell listed 17 authors, as diverse as Stephen King and Virginia Woolf, whose work she says has "inspired" her. The list contains the names of two contemporary short story masters: George Saunders (whose new story collection was the subject of an admiring cover story in the New York Times Magazine) and Jim Shepard. Without suggesting that Russell's stories are in any way derivative of Saunders' and Shepard's, their influence is evident in her work --- Saunders for his more than slightly off-center view of modern American life and Shepard for the historical and geographic range of his short fiction. While Russell may not yet be in their class, she has staked her claim to a place in this vibrant territory.

One criticism of the short stories produced by graduates of some of the elite MFA programs is that they sometimes feel as fragile as hot house flowers, their concerns narrow and their reach limited. The stories of Karen Russell are one vigorous response to that criticism. They vibrate with originality and life, and most have the imaginative reach and moral weight of works of much greater length. As long as she keeps producing work of this quality, the future of the short story, digital or otherwise, is bright.

Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

"Vampires in the Lemon Grove" is a collection of genre-spanning short stories by bestselling author, Karen Russell, of "Swamplandia" and "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves." Not quite science fiction, not quite horror, these stories range from the title story, of a pair of aging vampires, who seek out lemonade, rather than blood; to a most unusual collection of horses, to a fascinating, creepy story of an extremely unusual silk factory in an alternate-world version of industrialized Japan.

What is amazing to me is that the concepts are realized and presented in such a matter-of-fact way as to put them into the background, allowing the characters to assume center stage. In many such works, the authors may become enamored with the worlds they create, but Ms. Russell has the unique talent of making the utterly strange and bizarre seem almost ordinary or everyday.

Not all of the stories are of equal quality - I agree with the reviewers who single out the first three (particularly the second) as the best in the collection. Also, the bizarre, almost macabre undertones may limit the book's appeal. People who are looking for a series of happy endings and fluffy bunnies may not find them here - or, if they do, they will be in a very unusual form.

That said, I enjoyed this collection of stories very much and will definitely seek out future works by this author.

This was my first experience reading Karen Russell - and I was favorably impressed. Many other reviewers have noted the almost wantonly incomplete quality of the stories in this collection. While there were a few stories where this literary device was effective and appropriate, after a while, it became a tired mechanical trick, unworthy of Ms. Russell's talent.

She has an immense and beautiful voice - her style is lovely and impressive. I enjoyed her take on the vampire mythos and the lush and intriguing take on the silk worm women. All of her stories make interesting observations and are a fine way to while away a lazy afternoon with mental calisthenics. However, her characters often failed to connect to me, the reader, on a visceral level. They are amusing and challenging, but these stories do not do what great literature should do, which is to change the way we think - and this may not have been her intention (in which case, she succeeds.) The stories come across more as intellectual exercises than actual attempts to connect through writing.

Ms. Russell has a great talent - and, with time and dedication to such aspects of writing as character development and plotting, could one day become one of the great writers of our time. I anticipate with pleasure her future contributions.

This book consists of about eight short stories and I thought several of them were 4's - a couple I didn't care for. Russell has a great imagination - one of the stories depicts past presidents (the dead ones, anyway) as horses stabled on a farm with other horses that are non-presidential. I loved the idea - and I won't make any comments about which end of the horse which president was. She had one of the first whinnies out of John Adams' mouth as, "Is Jefferson here?" The evolution of their association throughout their lives made those three words so meaningful. One of them is about young women conscripted into a silk factory - they mutate into silkworms - but they have their rebellion. And a few are pretty disturbing - one of them features a massage therapist who attempts to ease the pain of an Iraqi veteran who has an intricately detailed tattoo of an event that happened during his service - or did it? I never could quite get into "Swamplandia," but had no trouble zipping through this book.

This is my first time reading Karen Russell’s work. I have read only the first two stories; they impressed me with their originality and fluidity. Despite the fact that the subject matter is darkly fanciful, and the protagonists themselves are not-quite-human, I finished both stories with the sense that they elucidate something essential and true about human experience. And more specifically, human experience in our time. So I’m left with the pleasant feeling that a story which ostensibly treats something so far removed from the reality I know, is in fact quite relevant and pertinent. What’s impressive to me is that this is achieved, not through relatively straightforward symbolism or metaphor—I wouldn’t describe these stories as allegorical—but through the author’s crafting of the experiential content of the stories. Like dreams, these stories have a ring of truth and urgency to them, despite the strangeness of the content. Anyway, I can't quite explain how she does what she does, but she's good. She’s the first contemporary writer that I’ve been excited about in a while.

When it comes to well-known writers who are household names, novel-length fiction is often the medium of choice. After all, Karen Russell was catapulted into the literary limelight for her Pulitzer prize-nominated novel, 'Swamplandia!,' not her debut collection of short stories, 'St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.'

While I eventually came to enjoy and appreciate 'Swamplandia!,' my initial frustration led one reader to suggest I try her short stories. After finishing just one story in this collection, I could easily understand why. Russell has an amazing, wonky imagination, which is best suited for shorter narratives. I was fortunate enough to see her speak at Politics & Prose in DC while promoting 'Vampires in the Lemon Groves.' She said that one of the best pieces of advice a professor in her MFA program told her was to limit herself to just one bizarre element in each tale. The excellent part is that with a collection of short stories, the reader gets her fill of Russell's strange universe, but in small, steady doses.

'Vampires in the Lemon Grove' features themes like industrialism/individualism in a tale about Japanese women who turn into silkworms to sacrifice and the burden of memory in a story about a massage therapist treating a veteran with a moving tattoo. Also, a disclaimer: Russell echoes famed short story writer Flannery O'Connor with her penchant to twist a seemingly innocuous story with darker endings. These elements of horror are never grotesque, but serve to amplify the dramatic elements of otherwise temperate prose.