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.
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.
Reading updates
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11 November, 2010:
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11 November, 2010:
Reviewed
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Started reading
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Finished reading
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11 November, 2010:
Reviewed