St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

I came to this book through an interesting occurrence of synchronicity. It got a rave review in Entertainment Weekly, and the very same day I read that review an interview with the author was in Penthouse. Now, Penthouse usually doesn't run interviews with authors, especially of books that could be classified as literature, especially with women who are fully clothed. But I couldn't ignore these signs and I picked up a copy.

The book is a collection of short stories by a young woman named Karen Russell (the fact that she is pretty darn cute didn't hurt). Most of them are set in or around the Florida Everglades, and most are neither narrated by or concern children in some sort of dire circumstances. A few of them concern one particular family, the Bigtrees, who own an alligator farm. Almost all of the stories are also tinged what could be called magic realism--elements of the story contain the fantastic. One story has a character who is a minotaur. Another is about two boys' search for their sister, who disappeared while riding a crab-shell, and they are aided in their search by a pair of magic swim goggles. The title story concerns a home for girls who are the children of werewolves, learning to adjust to civilized society.

I liked all the stories, it would be difficult to choose my favorite. They all suffer a bit from the writer's youth--they can be termed what is usually known as "precious." They are the kind of stories that can be found in a young girl's notebook, written in pink ink, but these just happen to be far better written. Also, the endings are frequently ambiguous, stopping ahead of a resolution. Although her stories have the patina of fairy tales, there are no happy-ever-afters.