Review: Vampires in the Lemon Grove – Karen Russell

Vampires in the Lemon Grove – Karen Russell

A dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left behind in a seagull’s nest.  A community of girls held captive in a silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms, spinning delicate threads from their own bellies, and escape 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 lower torso. When a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow bearing an uncanny resemblance to the missing classmate they used to torment, an ordinary tale of high school bullying becomes a sinister fantasy of guilt and atonement. In a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West, the monster is the human hunger for acquisition, and the victim is all we hold dear. And in the collection’s marvelous title story—an unforgettable parable of addiction and appetite, mortal terror and mortal love—two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try helplessly to slake their thirst for blood.

Review: Karen Russell is one of my favorite authors. She’s unbelievably creative, and I love how her stories come together at the ends. Usually, when I’m reading one of her short stories, I’m like, “Where is this going?” and then I suddenly get it. All of the pieces click together in an awesome way. The stories have a lot of humor and weirdness, but they also have a lot of depth. I’m rarely disappointed in them.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove is a collection of eight longish short stories. Like all short story collections, some of the stories are hits and others are misses for me. These are the four stories that stand out in my mind:

In “Proving Up,” a young boy confronts greed and death while he rides across the prairie to deliver a window to his neighbors.

In “The Barn at the End of Our Term,” former US presidents are not sure if they are in heaven or hell, but they do know that they have the bodies of horses.

“The New Veterans” is about a massage therapist who learns that she can alter her client’s memories by touching the tattoo that he got after he came home from war.

The final story that stands out is “The Graveless Doll of Eric Murtis.” This is my favorite in the collection. A group of school bullies discovers a scarecrow version of a boy they used to torment, but they have no idea who made the doll or why.

I like the themes of the stories in this collection. Many of the stories have to do with time, memory, and regret. If you could alter time, would you do it? If you suddenly found yourself in a vastly different body, how would you choose to live the rest of your life? Is it ethical to change a person’s sad memories to happy ones?

I didn’t like this collection as much as the author’s other collection, and I felt like a few of the stories dragged on a little too long, but if you’re a lover of magical realism, then this is a must-read. I highly recommend it.

Top Ten Tuesday: Funny Books About Serious Things

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s list is all about funny books. I don’t read a lot of funny books. I’m more of a death, doom, disease, and destruction kind of person. So, here are some funny moments that I’ve found in serious books.

Funny Moments In Serious Books

1. To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee

If you grew up in the US, you probably had to read this book in school, and you probably spent a whole English class talking about racism in the 1930s American South. But, remember Scout’s ham costume? And when Jem got his pants caught in the fence? Yeah, those were good moments.

2. Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt

This book about a family living in extreme poverty probably belongs on a list of the most depressing memoirs ever, but the author has hilarious ways of describing his family members and their hypocritical Irish Catholic beliefs.

3. Illuminae – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Bombings, plagues, and mass destruction aren’t funny, but the characters are. I laughed out loud at some of their conversations.

4. Going Bovine – Libba Bray

The main character is dying from mad cow disease. This is made slightly less depressing by the fact that the side character is a talking garden gnome.

5. Feed – M.T. Anderson

It’s a dystopia . . . where the characters go on dates to a filet mignon farm and wander through a maze made out of raw steak.

6. Any book by Rainbow Rowell

If you’ve never read a Rainbow Rowell book, you need to. Immediately. She writes about serious subjects, but the dialogue in her books is hilarious.

7. American Born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang

This graphic novel is about immigration and the difficulties of being Asian-American. It has some . . . um . . . interesting depictions of Chinese-American stereotypes.

8. Looking For Alaska – John Green

We all remember the traumatizing death part of this novel, but there was also that thing about the stripper . . .

9. The Martian – Andy Weir

The main character is stranded alone on Mars. For years. At least he has a sense of humor about it.

10. Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda – Becky Albertalli

Imagine being blackmailed into revealing your deepest secret. That happens in this book, but there’s also a lot of witty banter and a boy who loves Oreos as much as I do.

What is your favorite funny book?

Review: Unwind – Neal Shusterman

Unwind – Neal Shusterman

The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

Review: This is a hard book to review because I have so many problems with it, but I love it so much. Also, I feel weird for loving it because it’s a severely messed-up story. Seriously, unwinding is yucky business.

People have been telling me for years that I need to read Unwind, but I’ve been avoiding it for two reasons:

Reason #1: I was worried that it would be another tropey YA dystopia. I’ve read more than enough of those. 

Reason #2: That creepy human/fingerprint critter on the cover. It’s not creepy in an “I need to read this book immediately” way. It’s creepy in an “I don’t want that ugly bugger staring at me from the bedside table while I sleep” way.

Then, I heard people comparing this book to The Hunger Games. I was in the mood for something fast-paced and deadly, so I decided to give it a try. I was not disappointed. This book was exactly what I wanted. Don’t you love it when that happens?

I think the comparisons to The Hunger Games are valid, even though Unwind was published first. Both books are action-packed and feature teens who are rebelling against the government in order to save their lives. Both books also require the same type of suspension of disbelief. In The Hunger Games the government murders teens to keep the peace. In Unwind the government murders teens because that somehow satisfies both the pro-life and pro-choice people. All of this teen-murdering leads me to believe that our modern government is not killing nearly enough teens. Teen-murder seems to solve a lot of problems. Temporarily, at least.

Anyway, Unwind follows a group of teens who are trying to avoid being “unwound.” Their parents or the government are forcing them to give up their bodies. Every part of them will be donated to a person who needs it. No one is sure what happens to the teens’ consciousness when they are unwound. People don’t know if the teens die, or if they continue to live in a “divided state.”

This is a difficult book for me to review: I had a hard time buying the premise, but I couldn’t stop reading. It has been a long time since I got through a book this quickly. I needed to know what happened next because some parts of this novel are downright scary. I was worried for the characters. Every time I wasn’t reading this book, I wanted to be reading it. I was completely hooked once I got past my disbelief.

The story is told from multiple perspectives. My favorite perspective is Lev’s—he starts out wanting to be unwound as part of his religious duties, but he goes through a huge transformation over the course of the book. He’s the most well-developed and complex of the characters. I know that this book is part of a series, so I hope the other characters develop the same level of complexity as the series progresses.

Even though I love this book, there are two tiny things that distracted me. First, my edition has noticeable typos. These may have been fixed in newer editions. Second, the perspectives occasionally get slightly murky. The chapter headings suggest that this book is written in limited third-person point-of-view with alternating perspectives. Most of the book is written that way, but the third-person narrator occasionally breaks out of that limited perspective and becomes omniscient. It’s not confusing at all, and it builds suspense, so it’s technically not a problem, but it distracted me.  

I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series. I think it’s brave for an author to take on the abortion debate in a fiction book. I’m interested to see what happens next.

The Sunday Post #46

The Sunday Post is hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to recap the past week, talk about next week, and share news.

On The Blog Last Week

• On Monday I reviewed A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle.
• On Tuesday I listed books that every YA enthusiast needs to read.
• On Wednesday I reviewed A Madness so Discreet by Mindy McGinnis.
• On Thursday we discussed reading and morals.

On The Blog This Week

• On Monday I review Unwind by Neal Shusterman.
• On Tuesday I list funny books about serious things.
• On Wednesday I review Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell.
• On Thursday we talk about why I read dystopias.
• On Friday I tell you all the ways that an author can annoy a book blogger.

In My Reading Life

Last week, I read UnWholly by Neal Shusterman and Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. Right now, I’m reading UnSouled by Neal Shusterman. I have a feeling that I’m actually going to finish the Unwind series, guys. That hardly ever happens. I’m not a series person.

In My Blogging Life

Last week was the week of time-consuming blog posts. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had spent 6 hours marathon researching a blog post. That post was my Books Every YA Enthusiast Needs to Read post. My discussion last week also took a stupid amount of time to write. Check those out if you haven’t yet. I’m impressed with myself for harnessing the power of my wayward brain-meats and forcing them to do something semi-intelligent.

In The Rest Of My Life

Five things that made me happy last week:

1. I finished my third semester of graduate school and now need a serious nap.
2. I only have one semester of school left.
3. I’m not currently rushing to get anything done. That’s unusual.
4. More free time will hopefully mean more time to read.
5. I did pretty well with exercising and eating healthy. There was one incident with some Sun Chips, but we don’t need to talk about that.

I hope you had a great week! See you around the blogosphere!