I Read Karen Russell’s ‘Vampires In the Lemon Grove’.

I’ve only listened to two audiobooks, ever. It’s not that I don’t think they’re a legitimate form of taking in a story, but I have found that it forces your hand a little bit. In my experience with Circe, it felt like the perfect way to sink myself into what I may have found on the pages of the book itself… but with this collection of short stories, each read by a different narrator, it almost felt like I was in a karaoke room with people who really liked each other (and themselves) but weren’t quite hitting the notes. This is all to say that I don’t necessarily think that the best way to ingest this collection was by listening. I’m not sure that reading it would have given me a different opinion overall on the book, but it couldn’t have hurt.

Russell’s writing in these stories feels so focused on the complacent and banal within the strange and esoteric worlds in which the characters are living. We get a good sense of their humanity. We get a sense, too, of how their pants fit and how they get annoyed at small distractions. We learn the weight of tools and the nerve it takes to make eye contact (and the comfort it gives to avoid it). I liked her style a lot, and I love her powers of observation. She sees the world through the eyes of everyone. No one is a superhero, almost no one is powerful in the way that they want to be. Everyone is wading through the hunger and the thirst of living just outside the perfection they’ve sought.

There are 8 stories in all, some of them good, some of them bad. I would love to leave it to you to decide to read them and get your own opinion of them, but to summarize, the tales are as follows:
- An old vampire learns that most of the mythology about himself is a lie and he lives his immortality with his wife who begins to guide him away from the cliches he dug himself into, until one day she begins to ache for some new way of life and he acts out.
- A harem of women are taken from their hometowns into service of the empire creating silk in various colors for their captors to sell.
- A boy has a longing crush for a girl in his class, but his brother has swooped in and began to date her. Through the seemingly prophetic thievery of the seagulls who have descended upon town, the boy manages to work his way into the girl’s good graces and gain her favor.
- A boy is meant to make a delivery of an important asset to a neighboring family but is met with a terrible storm.
- Presidents are reincarnated as horses.
- There is a list of rules for rooting for different creatures in the antarctic food chain.
- A masseuse unlocks painful memories and traumatic experiences for a veteran. Her manipulation of his muscles and skin seem to change the way he remembers certain incidents in the same way that turning a dial on the radio can change the song.
- A group of boys find a scarecrow of a boy they bullied throughout school, causing the narrator to relive in intimate and regrettable details of his relationship with their victim.

As always, collections of short stories can feel like a playlist from a band rather than an album. My least favorite story was the one in which several older US Presidents were reincarnated as horses in a barn, each speaking to each other about their past, their future and their freedom, and interacting with other farm animals in silly and obtuse ways. My favorite was the story of the silk-spinners. There’s a bit of a twist in it that is beautiful and imaginative.

My biggest takeaway from this book and from Russell’s writing is her ability to pluck settings and scenarios for her stories. She has an imagination and (again) an observation that grants her the ability to leave nothing out, and the things that she chooses to include and to write about makes those things feel special. Each of these stories, whether I liked them or not, was deeply unique. I will definitely be reading more from her in the future.

I do recommend checking out this book, if only for a few of the stories. They will engage with you in ways that stir attention. Even if I wasn’t loving the stories themselves, I was thinking (selfishly) about how they applied to my line of thinking, to my life, to my characterhood, to my place in the world. Very happy I gave it a shot!