Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell (2013)

Karen Russell begins the first of this book's eight short stories with a seemingly prosaic account of an elderly man sitting on a bench in a lemon grove, watching the lemons fall. His wife "has no patience for this sort of meditation. 'Jesus Christ, Clyde,' she says. 'You need a hobby.'" Then at the end of the next paragraph, the old man says, "They never guess that I am a vampire."

This will give you some idea of Russell's magical mixture of the mundane with the fantastic. The results can be, by turns, wistfully touching or terror inducing or laugh-out-loud hilarious, sometimes all in the same story. In addition, her arresting prose abounds with original and startling images. For example, she writes, "The giant seagull had a sheriff's build--distended barrel chest, spindly legs splayed into star-shaped feet." She describes a children's playground that "looked like a madhouse. Padded swings, padded slides, padded gyms, padded seesaws and go-wheelies: all the once-fun equipment had gotten upholstered by the city in this red loony-bin foam."

In addition to aging vampires, this collection includes young women who have been transformed into human silkworms, dead presidents reincarnated as horses, a message therapist who can erase memories through the manipulation of a veteran's tattoos, a young pioneer boy who makes a desperate nightmare ride, and a scarecrow found by young bullies that resembles one of their favorite victims. No matter how far-fetched the scenario, however, the emotions portrayed are true-to-life.

Russell reminds me very much of one of my favorite authors, Angela Carter, who also used magic realism with a subtext agenda. While Carter's subtext almost always had a feminist basis, Russell's subtext has to do with what it means to be human.

I highly recommend this short story collection, as well as Russell's earlier novel, Swamplandia (reviewed June, 2012). I understand that her first collection of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, is also very good.