St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

by Karen Russell

Charting loss, love, and the difficult art of growing up, these stories unfurl with wicked humour and insight. Two young boys make midnight trips to a boat graveyard in search of their dead sister, who set sail in the exoskeleton of a giant crab; a boy whose dreams foretell implacable tragedies is sent to 'Sleepaway Camp for Disordered Dreamers' (Cabin 1, Narcoleptics; Cabin 2, Insomniacs; Cabin 3, Somnambulists...); a Minotaur leads his family on the trail out West, and finally, in the collection's poignant and hilarious title story, fifteen girls raised by wolves are painstakingly re-civilised by nuns. These ten extraordinary stories introduce an audacious new talent, and a world in which weird and wonderful predicaments magically reveal the truth of our own lives. This title presents a blazingly original voice, a dazzling debut, and a breathtaking discovery.

• ISBN10: 1627655786
• ISBN13: 9781627655781
• Publish Date: 14 August 2007 (first published 5 September 2006)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Perfection Learning
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Pages: 246
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Sometimes I get lonely for a certain place, and once I’ve puzzled out and put my finger on where exactly it is, it’s located on the inside of a book.

(Here, the alligator swamps of Florida, the itchy magic of haunted siblings.)

That’s how I guess it’s okay for me to say, when someone asks where I’ve traveled, or where I want to go, I can get away with answering “everywhere.”

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First read, 2009: I loved this book. Maybe sometimes the voices were precious and a story ended a page (or ten) too soon, but I tend to love things even more if they’re just flawed enough to be supremely more interesting, and man, I loved this book.