Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories

WOW! These stories were all so unique - some horrifying, others darkly comic, most with a tint of sadness, all well-written and profound.

Not my favorite collection of short stories.

This collection of stories had its star players. I really enjoyed the fantasy vein that ran through many of the stories, including "Reeling for the Empire," "Proving Up," and the titular "Vampires in the Lemon Grove. The first especially had my full attention. If the whole collection had the same vibe as those, I think I would have rated this book higher.

However, a few of the stories were a bit lackluster for me. Having said that, I am not usually a big fan of short stories as a whole. It could be my own personal experience with the genre is affecting my opinion.

This is an excellent collection of short stories! I would have given it five stars, but the last story didn't grab me like the others. Karen Russell is so original and creative! Imagine all former presidents reincarnated as horses, or women spinning silk thread in their stomachs, or settlers sharing a piece of window glass to pass final homestead inspection, requiring one window minimum to be declared the landowner. Well worth a read!

Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a selection of short stories, explores imaginative settings while still injecting real life emotions and current struggles. The title story,even though about two long married vampires, is more about their relationship and addiction than about whether the thirst for blood can be satisfied with a fresh lemon. I enjoyed how each story created a new fantastical world - Japanese women turned into silkworms for the benefit of their country, a veteran's tattoo that seems to be subject to change based on the abilities of his masseuse, a stable of horses that are reincarnated presidents-- and yet the emotions of the characters were entirely relatable. Plus she really writes well.

I blinked down at a little blond child and then saw that my two hands were shaking violently, soundlessly, like old friends wishing not to burden me with their troubles. I dropped the candies into the children’s bags, thinking: You small mortals don’t realize the power of your stories.

Girls trailed him down the boardwalk, clucking stupidly about the new waxy sheen to his head. Samson was seventeen and had what Nal could only describe as a bovine charm: he was hale and beefy, with a big laugh and the deep serenity of a grazing creature.

She tries hard to spite the magazines and persist in her childhood belief that aging is honorable, to wear her face proudly, like a scratched medallion, the widening circles of purple under her eyes and the trenches on her brow.

He walks into the room with an actual swagger, that sort of boastful indifference to gravity that Beverly associates with cats and Italian women.

Book jacket:
A dejected teenager believes that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left behind in a seagull’s nest. Girls held captive in a silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms, spinning delicate threads from their own bellies and escaping by seizing the means of production for their own revolutionary ends. A massage therapist discovers she has the power to heal by manipulating the tattoos on a war veteran’s torso. And in the collection’s marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try helplessly to slake their thirst for blood.

Original, interesting stories of transformation and supernatural occurences. Russell is very adept at mixing "everyday" lifestyles with some bizarre interruptions (vampires who feed off lemons instead of blood, seagulls who scavenge crucial objects from your past and future). Alas, I am not a huge short story fan -- too much build up for an often ambiguous ending -- so bailed to move on to other options.

It was a nice mix of creepy, bizarre, and just plain funny stories. Russell really builds a little world for each of her stories to inhabit that feels simultaneously real and surreal. The tone shifts wildly within the stories, but they seem to fit together like a good mixtape. I found Proving Up, while probably my favorite of the bunch, to be particularly creepy. So, it was nice to have a really silly story following it to break the tension.

I'd definitely recommend this for anyone who likes strange short stories where you're left wanting to know just a little bit more about the worlds they inhabit.

Great short story read for the summer. This collection is truly out-of-the-box.

Creepy, magical, carefully but fluently crafted stories. I am especially impressed with how well she captures the voice of 14-year-old boys. Highly recommended!

I'm not sure if I can make sense of why I liked this so much. I think more than anything, and more than any recent books I've read, this one made me want to sit back, and think deeply about these stories. I could only manage to read two stories a night, because of this. And no author in a long, long time has done that for me.
I think I am now a huge fan of Karen Russell. This is some of the most intelligent writing I've ever read. Clever, inventive, precise, yet still packed with magnetic characters. The prose of each story, even if the styles vary, is always controlled, like each letter was set in place with tweezers. In fact, often times throughout the stories, I was arrested by the rich subtext beneath her bizarre tales. The final tale could easily have suffered the route of a bad horror film. Instead she get to the core of lonely, frightened boys playing at acting tough, like the characters in the last story.
Russell possesses such a gift for evoking a setting, so that I had no trouble shifting from Italy to Japan to an inner city playground. Once you accept her odd, interesting, imaginative worlds, it’s much easier to find the humor and truth in her characters. These stories span the globe, many different eras and a variety of socio-economic conditions, but at their heart, they all investigate lonely people in search of connections.

1. Vampires in the Lemon Grove (Title story): This story made the "Twilight" phenomenon seem as juvenile as it is. There's so much more to vampires! They're people just like us, and they have restraint, exotic histories, and can hold love for generations. It was quite a lovely story, but I was unsure of the ending.

2. Reeling for the Empire: This was one of my favorites and should be anthologized alongside Ray Bradbury. It has that old world feel, as if plucked from the 19th Century. I'm not sure if the story was a metaphor for the current problem of human trafficking, but anyone interested in this issue should read this. I don't want to give anything away, but this story was so weird, and so beautifully haunting, I had to walk away from the book and marvel at the author's expansive imagination. Such a large piece of investigation must have gone on, to learn about the spinning of silk, at this time! And customs, in that era. I was wowed.

3. The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979: A love story cross between Junot Diaz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. As I ended this novel, I desperately wanted more details. I learned by this story, Russell has a way of holding back. She'll draw you in, but you're not getting that close. I, for one, wanted to learn more about the huge albatross masses that suddenly came into being there, and why.... And what about their stealing things? Man, that could have been a whole 'nother novel in Itself!! How? WHY??? Lol...

4. Proving Up: This one reminded me of Stephen King's short story, "The Man in the Black Suit". I'd love to ask the author if King was of any inspiration to her. There's also a Little House on the Prairie feel to the landscape and characters. Not giving away plot points, but this story will leave you proving up and staying up. (Like I said, Stephen King.) WHO was that figure, in the end...?

5. The Barn at the End of Our Term: Again, sheer inventiveness. Such imagination!! Dead presidents reincarnating into stable horses. Who else could imagine and pull this off in a dozen pages? This story started off somewhat slowly, but keep reading, it's just a set-up for the fantastic 'leap' at the end. The last few paragraphs had the thrill of the final straightaway at the Kentucky Derby. I would love more back story on it all.

6. Dougbert Shackelton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating: This was my least favorite. I think you need to know more about Shackelton's exploration story to get the humor. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be funny. But I didn't get it, sorry.

7. The New Veterans: My favorite story hands down. This is the one that makes me want to meet the author. This is a war story dealing with the issues of Iraqi war veterans. This story was well-researched and spot on. Her use of magic realism was awe-inspiring. She used the supernatural in a way that didn't detract from the reality of war, but enhanced it like a garnish, as if adding an even brighter ornament to the reverence we have for those that sacrifice their lives in war. And, she obviously researched massages.

8. The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis: Ok, by this story, I'm convinced that Russell is one of the smartest living writers. Anyone that has the experience of being marginalized during their school years will recognize this story, and Eric. She somehow accomplishes the impossible by forcing the reader to sympathize with the bully and the bullied. Perhaps that was the point, but if you want your stories to end cleanly, then this will leave you frustrated. Personally, I don't need a clean ending, but if I should ever have the honor of meeting Russell, I'm sure my first question will be, "What happened to Eric Mutis??!!??"

This is a great collection from a writer with a fresh, exciting voice, one to seek out, hold on and look forward to. I can't wait to explore Karen's other collection and read her novel, hoping that she will publish more of her great stories in the near future. Thumbs up!!

Where do some authors get their ideas to write stories like those in this book? Vampires trying to quench their thirst for blood by sucking on lemons, girls transformed into gigantic silk worms condemned to spin threads eternally, tattoos that come to life and have a story to tell, presidents of the United States reincarnated as horses... The stories in this book inspire terror, hilarity, dread, or laughter in the face of the most absurd situations. None leave you indifferent. At times, they remind you of the texts of master Stephen King. (Translated from Spanish)

I only read the first story (the title story) in this collection. I actually picked it up at the library and started reading (sampling) on page 3 or 4, and decided to read it. A few minutes later I realized it was a book of short stories, and I thought, so much the better. I’ll read this one and decide whether to read more.

I liked the story, but it didn’t really end in any sort of satisfying way. Mostly it left me with a ton of questions.

Amazing book. Russell's prose is spot on--just gorgeous--and I love a good bit of magical realism. I will have to own this at some point, and I don't really say that about a lot of books.

A collection of strange and beautifully written short stories, in which, among other things, vampires learn to suck lemons, young women are turned into silkworms, and former US presidents find themselves reincarnated as horses. Oddly enough, the title story was, for me, the least satisfying of the lot (although still very well-written), but the best of them sort of crawl into your brain and do some really bizarre and interesting things in there. The silkworm story ("Reeling for the Empire") is particularly unforgettable.

I skipped several of the stories when they got stanger than I was interested in seeing the end.

Trismegistus.
The enveloping, subtle, resonant tone of these stories alone makes them great.
The otherwise-unimaginable plots, taken to their unexpected-yet-inevitable ends make them great.
The casually dropped jewels of phrase ("that sun ate lakes")make them great.
There is a word for this quality of work: trismegistus.
Karen Russell is undiminished. All Hail!

Mixed bag for me, I liked some of the stories, but some of them I really disliked.

A collection of truly bizarre short stories: human silk worms, future-stealing seagulls, horse presidents, window smugglers, and other strange happenings all over the world and throughout history. I'm not sure if I could honestly say I really enjoyed these stories. There were a lot of really unusual and interesting concepts, but the plots and characters left something to be desired.

A note on the audio: Usually I don't like multiple narrators, but I think it works to have a different reader for each story here, especially since they take place in so many different places. It would be strange for the same person to read as the teenage boy in 1970s Australia and as the young girl in 19th century Japan, for example.

Karen Russell is an international treasure. Damn.

A series of U.S. presidents find themselves reincarnated as horses.
A young boy discovers a large seagull is stealing pieces of the future.
Impoverished Japanese women are sold to a factory that genetically alters them to serve the function of silk worms.
Tips for tailgating in the Antarctic.

A collection of humorous, contemplative, and transcendent short stories.

The first stories didn't appeal to me but several were worth the entire book, amazing writing.

I liked the best of these stories as much as anything in Karen Russell's first collection--St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves--but it had more stories that fell flat. Overall, however, amazingly well recounted fantastic tales delivered in a realistic manner that are primarily about the imagination and secondarily about almost comically unrealistic yearnings and desires.

My favorite was "Reeling for the Empire" which was about girls in Meiji Japan who were purchased from their families, turned into giant silkworms, and put to work spinning for the empire. A close second is the title story, "Vampires in the Lemon Grove", which is about older vampires trying to avoid blood while sucking on lemons in an Italian lemon grove. I also liked "The New Veterans", which was about a massage therapist who could manipulate a veterans feelings/memories by massaging the highly realistic tattoo of a battle he had on his back.

"The Barn at the End of Our Term" and "Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating" were both amusing trifles but not much more, the former about eleven President's reincarnated as horses in a barn on a farm scheming to run again and the later about an obsessive supporter of "team krill" in the competition against the whales, although he is also realistic that they have never won a competition.

I did not really get into the other three stories to anywhere the same degree.

If Russell’s debut was full of deeply original images, but behaps more about single situations than arcs, and Swamplandia! was a brilliant premise of a novel that became just a little one note, this is the book where she shows her full potential. For here are (mostly) tight little stories that will make you turn the pages BOTH to see where they are going and what oddness Russell will whip up next. For make no mistake, these are still strange stories, nesting uneasily in the borderland between horror, fantasy and magical realism, often with a bit of black humor thrown in.

At the heart of them are people (or,um, well, approximations of humans, I guess) trying their best to handle some rather hopeless circumstances. If I were to sum up this book in one word, “coping” comes to mind. From vampires bent on not drinking blood, to American presidents finding themselves reborn as horses in a stable in a place that very much resembles Kentucky, to the veteran tattooing the death scene of his friend all over his back, these stories deal with strategies, deliberate choices that are hard to make.

As we tend to say it in this group when we’re gushing over short stories: all of these are very good, and many of them are great. It’s hard to pick favorites, but two that resonated strongly with me was “Reeling for the empire”, about young Japanese women turned into living silk factories – a weird story with a strange sort of hopefulness to it. And “Dougbert Shackleton’s rules for Antarctic tailgating”, which says so much about what it is to love a losing team in sports (or life) through the wonderfully bizarre metaphor of rooting for Team Krill in the food chain. I loved this book, and I love where Karen Russell is going. Recommended both for you who loved Swamplandia! and those of you who felt it was a “close but no cigar” kind of book.

Karen Russell's two previous books, the novel Swamplandia! and the story collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves have received impressive critical acclaim and popular success, and I'm sure that this collection will continue that trend.

The stories in this book show tremendous skill in this young (b. 1981) writer, and also a remarkable range. Russell shows mastery and confidence with a sweeping variety of settings, character types, and moods. All of this volume's stories include some element of fantasy, but here too she ranges from a subtle touch of the supernatural to completely fantastical plots.

Russell also has a terrific talent for utterly delightful descriptive phrases. A group of Japanese women are "graceful as calligraphy"; a sod hut in summer is "as hot as the held breath of the world"; a man's face is "as taut and bloated with pain as a waterskin"; a toy gun "required sixteen triple-A batteries to make a noise like a tubercular guinea pig."

Two of my favorite stories illustrate Russell's range:

"Proving Up" is a dark and gritty tale of a settler family in frontier Nebraska, and an incredibly fresh take on the tired old "coming of age" theme. There is a point, this story tells us, where perseverance in the face of hardship becomes madness rather than strength.

In "The Barn at the End of Our Term," a random selection of past US presidents find themselves reincarnated as horses, now all living on the same farm. The story is both sweetly moving and riotously funny; the horses debate whether their situation is Heaven or Hell ("don't you think Heaven would smell better?" one of them asks), plot an escape to return to their careers in Washington, and bestow officious titles on each other, such as Governor of the Cow Pastures and Commanding General of the Standing Chickens.

I do have a few quibbles with this book: "Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating" was for me just a long and unfunny gag, and I thought "The New Veterans" could have used a few hard editorial shakes to get its constituent parts to settle down into a more compact and cohesive whole. And I felt that the endings of a few of the stories were a little faltering; as if the story couldn't decide whether it was ending with a rousing cymbal-crash or doing a quiet fadeout.

But I've read Russell's first collection of stories, and I think this one shows a clear improvement in her technical skills as a writer. And by any measure, this is an excellent collection by an excellent author. One can only wonder where Russell will go in the decades ahead.

This was my first foray into audiobooks, and I'm still on the fence on how I feel about them. But I figured, since I drive 45 minutes to school each way 4 days a week (and I was getting tired of the songs on my iPod) I should try audiobooks. My library doesn't have the most expansive selection, but Vampires in the Lemon Grove was on my TBR list, so when I saw that on the shelf, I took that as a sign.

I was worried that I would get annoyed with the various readers (which I did), or that I wouldn't like some of the stories (which I did). However, I found most of the stories and readers enjoyable, especially the titular story about vampires who live off of lemon juice in a grove in Italy, and a kooky guide to tailgating in the Antarctic. Unfortunately, the story I liked the least ("The New Veterans") ended up being the longest of the bunch, and I found the reader to be the most annoying. I guess it was hard for me at first to get used to "reading" a story with someone else's voice and at someone else's pace.

It did make the commute more enjoyable though. Russell's stories all have a sense of the fantastic to them (I'm hesitant to call it "magical realism", but that's the closest phrase that comes to mind). You don't always know right away what's different in the stories, but something happens that makes you think "Oh. Well, that's different." And that's not a bad thing. I appreciate authors who can present familiar situations and characters then turn the entire thing on its head.

I admire authors who write short stories. To me, it seems like a difficult style to write, since you need to essentially create a believable world with interesting characters in a fourth of the time as a novel. I wonder now, though, would I have enjoyed the stories more if I read them for myself and not listened to them?

I don't remember what enticed me to pick up Russell's first book, the novel Swamplandia! But I do know that book was the reason I picked this one up. Swamplandia! was a great book with weird characters, but the depth given just made it such a great read. In a short story anthology, there's just not that space to draw characters out the way Russell managed so well with her novel.

I think Russell's quirkiness comes out in Vampires in the Lemon Grove, but it seemed forced in some stories. The title story seemed a little drab, meanwhile the next three stories seemed alright, but I guess I expected more from Russell after Swamplandia!

With the next two stories - one about former presidents being reincarnated as horses and another about basically a sporting event where there's fans of different sea creatures with the narrator being a supporter of team krill, I felt Russell just had an idea that may have been amusing as a statement "I had a dream that presidents came back as horses. And that people go to the Antarctic to cheer on krill or to cheer on whales." In either case, that would have sufficed. Turning them into full stories? Not so much.

Fortunately, the last two stories - one of a tattoo that seems to let a memory live on while taking over the life of someone that interacts with it and the other of boys finding a scarecrow in the likeness of a boy they teased, saved the whole collection. The last two stories were what I really had expected from Russell the whole time. If they had started off the collection, it would have been horrible ...ending with the horse and krill stories....would have left such a bad taste. But having the two best at the end saved it. With the first three stories, I think the collection would have garnered three stars. With the two stories I hated, they would have been two stars at best. The final two stories maybe 4 stars each...so the collection is worth reading I suppose, but much more enjoyable if you can convince yourself to skip two of the stories.

I know others really liked the two stories I hated, but I felt that if i wanted to read George Saunders, I'd have picked up George Saunders and it would have been done better...

Karen Russell comes from the same place that brings us Kelly Link with these peculiar fictions which either start in strange places or get there very quickly. They have a pretty strong sense of theme as well, though, so I didn't find myself wondering by the last lines why the piece had been written. Along with the squalor comes a feeling of understanding, but it never feels as if it is something the author wants to overpower the reader. I will be interested in reading the novel she has published and to look out for other story collections of hers.

I truly loved "Swamplandia", and went into reading this collection with high expectations. Then I read the title story. I cannot recall the last time I have so disliked any short story. It was a struggle to finish the thing, and had I not read and loved Russell's prior work I would have stopped right there. To say the story is precious is a colossal understatement. A vampire who learns about the transience of satiation and the downside of forever. Just freaking adorable! Having read this I can see there were portions of "Swamplandia" that were similarly overwritten, but in the context of the entire book those things worked. This story is out there flapping in the wind with nothing to redeem it from its muck of message-y cuteness. Its like Faerie Tale Theatre for disillusioned 30-somethings. Given my dislike for the first story I almost stopped reading, but continue I did, and I am glad I made that choice. It turns out the remainder of the book is far better, and some of the work is positively gorgeous.

Though sometimes her stories are less than the sum of their parts, there is no question that Karen Russell is a fantastic writer. Her sentences are like perfectly cut jewels, inherently beautiful and remarkable for how they refract all that is around them. Hemmingway, move over, you have company in the "Best Sentences in American Lit" category. In the end I liked most of the stories and truly loved a few.

Like most reviewers, I was blown away by "Reeling for the Empire." This is among the best short stories I have read. One thing people complain about in reviews is that Russell's stories just end with no resolution. Not so here. This is spare but absolutely complete. I also shared with other reviewers a wildly positive reaction to "Proving Up." Russell dips into horror with this one, and that is typically not a genre I enjoy, but it works here. Where I differ from most other reviewers is that I liked all but one of the stories at the end of the book. Most reviewers extolled the first four stories and wrote off the remaining four as filler, but I disagree. "The Barn at the End of our Term" and "Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules For Antarctic Tailgating" were the most fun reads here. I laughed all the way through both of them. "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" was exceptionally thought provoking. "The New Veterans" was too long by half, and the characters seemed less nuanced than is typical for Russell, but it there was still some there there. I just re-read this and realized I had forgotten to mention that seagull story, which basically summarizes my thoughts on that story. Very MFA. It was entirely...fine.

So, all in all I am going to give this a 3-star. Maybe 3.5. There is lots of good here, but the vampire drek, the neverendingness of the veteran story, and the forgetablness of the seagull story make it hard to get to a four. I fully expect to see a couple of these stories in anthologies, and they will shine once they are divorced from the whole.

One of the best audiobooks you will ever encounter. The eight wildly original and emotionally powerful stories are read by an all-star roster of audiobook voice artists. I have never encountered a short story collection that has been this well-produced. The stories are outlandishly diverse with the one common element being their emotional force. Highest recommendation.

Like first story about vampires but couldn't finish any of the rest.