Book Reviews

I've been dealing with a frustrating experience regarding book reviewing.  I was asked to review a book, which I did in good faith.  It turns out, I think it's a bad book.  I said as much (though in much greater detail) in the book review.  The editors of the journal in which the review is (was?) to appear have asked me to "tone it down." I did, a bit, but have again been asked to "temper" some of my language.

I am irritated, because, in truth, the editor agrees with my take on this book, and has explicitly said as much.  There are some serious problems with the book.  But the author is one that we're not allowed to critique too directly, for reasons I won't go into here.  But the work is bad.  I think I'd rather not publish any review at all than be asked to paint some glowing picture of something that only makes me glower.

So, to make myself feel better while I await further review of my review, I'm going to briefly review here a book that I very much like, and that I can fully endorse.  So here you go:

The book is St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell.  I will be honest here and say that I have not yet finished it, but I have to return it to the library (and now go buy my own copy).  But I thought I should set down my ideas while I still have it, and while I'm feeling firey about book reviews.

Given the title, you are no doubt not surprised that I would want to check it out.  Really, I got it largely because of the title, though also because a visiting writer here described it as what he thought young writers who tend to (or want to) write like Stephenie Meyer (Twilight) should aspire to write like instead. 

It is awesome. The title story, in particular, is fabulous.  "The Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crimes" is another standout.

The stories are largely about children.  Each story sets up these "normal" scenarios -- going to summer camp, being sent to a religious boarding school, performing in a school choir, etc. -- and then twists them.  Often, the twists appear in the opening of the story, as in "Star Gazer's," which begins with "I didn't come out here tonight expecting to join a Comical Ironical Crime Ring."  How can you not read on?  The slightly askew, often funny, and often simultaneously horrifying events are oddly believable, perhaps because we can believe children and teenagers will do anything, and we are both amused and horrified by the things they do, such as, again in "Star-Gazer's" when a group of kids pin a note to a young disabled man that has befriended them that says "I would like to purchase your least expensive beer" and send him into a convenience store.  Hilarious.  Horrifying.

So the scenarios are normal, but then the specifics are not: the summer camp campers all have weird sleep disorders, the boarding school is for children raised by wolves, rather than, say, regular old children raised by humans, and the school choir performs in order to set off an avalanche.  The kids are totally (often creepily and disturbingly) recognizable, but then something is just slightly off-kilter.  Largely, the off-kilter-ness is in the adults, or lack thereof.  Without the adults around, the kids seem to exist in some strange parallel universe, where the totally mundane meets the miraculous.

The kids are kids, doing things you might well expect kids to do.  In "Haunting Olivia," two boys go out in search of their younger sister, who died years before.  But while their motives and emotions are totally understandable, they live in a world that is utterly confusing.  How exactly did anyone allow Olivia to do what she was doing when she died?  How is it that these two remaining children have basically been abandoned by any useful or comforting adult interventions?  These elements of the stories are almost more mystifying than the supernatural mysteries (in this case, the boys find a pair of goggles that let them see the spirits of the dead, including, in spectacular fashion, a plesiosaur swimming in the ocean).

All this is to say, these are lovely stories, and you should go read this book: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russell. I wouldn't write it if I didn't truly believe it.

BTW, I hope to have more book reviews soon.