Growing up is hard to do, especially without the benefit of a stable home life. That is the theme running through the ten short stories in this excellent collection. Karen Russell portrays her protagonists at the brink of puberty and places them in surreal locations and situations, crafting the stories as allegories of a sort, representing the pains faced as childhood fantasies are abandoned and adult feelings and understanding enter in.
In the first selection, "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," a young girl encounters adult sexuality for the first time. Several others in the collection echo this theme, portraying the primary confusion encountered when one reaches puberty. In "Children's Reminiscences of the Westward Migration" a boy struggles to maintain his hero worship of his father. In "Haunting Olivia" two brothers try to come to terms with the death of their little sister. And in the title story, a girl sent away to boarding school finds when she returns home that it no longer feels like home to her.
If these sound like prosaic stories, it's because I have left out the ghosts and the Minotaur and the magic swim goggles and the werewolves and suchlike which also inhabit the tales.
This is Karen Russell's first book-length publication, and the comedic talent she displays in later publication is only fleeting visible here. Though some stories do have flashes of clever humor, they are always wistfully sad, because, after all, it is sad when a child can no longer believe in magic or see his father as a god.
I also recommend Russell's novel Swamplandia (reviewed in June, 2012), an expansion of the first story in this collection, and Vampires in the Lemon Grove (reviewed last month), her latest short story collection.
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