Already a master of tone and texture and an authority on the bizarre, Karen Russell writes with great flair and fearlessness. The finest of the stories of shape-shifting and transmutation in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” are so extreme and convincing, you fear for what Russell dreams.
A Miami native familiar with the varied, swampy terrain of Florida, she sets many of her stories in the aquatic; characters in her yarns are defined by their relationship to water, and evolve from the amniotic fluid of Russell’s fevered imagination.
Even when the stories pack in too much, they impress with originality. The best are the steamy “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” the mythologically grounded “From Children’s Reminiscences of the Westward Migration,” “The City of Shells” and “Out to Sea.” The wackiest conceit is the one that informs the title tale. “St. Lucy’s Home” suggests a school in which werewolf children are taught human social niceties, forcing them to wear constricting uniforms and to forfeit two of their cloven hooves so they can walk on two “feet.” It’s a private school, likely parochial; Russell’s symbolism, no matter how outlandish, is grounded in the literal.
These are narratives of childhood and adolescence; Russell, who has published in Granta and the New Yorker, is 25. In her world, adults remain at a distance, to be admired (the minotaur in “Reminiscences”), pitied (Sawtooth, the needy anti-hero of “Out to Sea”) or scorned (the repugnant Mr. Pappadakis of “Shells”).
Russell’s point of view is usually that of a young person. Deeply in touch with her inner adolescent, she does yucky to a T. Here, Russell gets inside the head of Big Red, a young girl who works in the City of Shells amusement park. Big Red lives with her mom and her mom’s beau, Mr. Pappadakis. “She wanted a father, but she’d had to settle for Mr. Pappadakis. Mr. Pappadakis smells like Just for Men peroxide dye and eucalyptus foot unguents. He has a face like a catcher’s mitt. The whole thing puckers inward, drooping with the memory of some dropped fly ball. Big Red’s mother has many epithets for Mr. Pappadakis: “our meal ticket,” “my sacrifice,” “vitamin P.” He is an obdurate man, a man of irritating, inveterate habits.
The way Russell beds mundane detail in surrealist settings makes her work exceptionally evocative. My one quarrel with this striking debut is that despite variations in locale, theme and relationships, the characters and conflicts tend to blur into one another. At the same time, Russell’s astonishing gifts augur well for a novel of maturity and complexity. It’s only a matter of time.
Carlo Wolff is a free-lance writer from Cleveland.
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St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
By Karen Russell
Knopf, 272 pages, $22
