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.
"Her debut collection paints a refreshingly surreal vision of small-town life... Selected by Granta as one of America's best young novelists, Russell is an intuitive writer with a gift for arresting prose." - Independent
"An exuberant collection; each story bursts forth from the pages with a cacophony of imagery that sweeps up the reader." - The Times
"Outrageously imaginative and profoundly funny... surreal... impressive in many ways... Her imagination is agile, like the body of a champion gymnast, and she lets it dance... Does anyone over here write like this, with such freedom, such vivacity? A wild and brilliant first book." - Irish Times
"Arcane, magical tales of adolescent transformation... reminiscent of Angela Carter but wonderfully confident and refreshing in its own right." - Guardian
"Delights in the quirky...truly magical and creepy settings." - Daily Mail
Other Books by Karen Russell
