Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Other Stories was a bit of a gamble for me. I don’t normally pick up short stories. But the title caught my attention and I liked that the stories had fantasy elements in them. So I decided to give it a try.

 Let’s start with my personal favorite, Reeling of the Empire. It’s about these young women who work at a silk factory in Japan in what I assume is the early 1900s or sometime during the Industrial Age. But there is a twist that makes this story crazy interesting and gives it potential to be expanded into a novel. The women are transforming into mutant human-silkworms! The factory leader gave them tea with a silkworm in it that started their transformation.  

I really liked the vivid descriptions of the women’s appearances after their transformations and what happened when they made silk. Even though some of those descriptions were a little too vivid (I could feel my stomach turning as I read them). I think the Japanese culture was well-researched and made the story feel real even thought it was about women turning into silk-worms. I thought the rebellion plot picked up the pace of the story and subtly added suspense.

Another story I need to point out is The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis.  It follows four teenage boys who find a scarecrow in the middle of the woods that looks eerily like their missing classmate they used to bully.  I will admit I found this story really unsettling.

Every time they go see the scarecrow, it is missing a body part. At first, I felt like it was a prank, but then the boys started to get more and more freaked out. I got a little freaked out, because I wanted to know what happened to this kid and how he disappeared, but Russell never gives those answers. However I do appreciate the change in one of the boys as the story progresses. I like that he starts to worry more about what happened to his classmate and to think a little harder about how he treated him. So I see the scarecrow as a lesson on bullying—a very creepy one albeit.

Now let’s finally talk about Vampires in the Lemon Grove, the title and opening story in this collection that gives you a brief look into the life of a vampire couple. I’ve read a lot about vampires in novels and have seen them in movies and television. I understand every writer likes to have their own spin on the genre. In this story, the vampire couple did not drink blood (well at least at the beginning….) and sank their fangs into other objects with lemons being the current one of choice. That was interesting to me, because in most of the vampire stories I’ve encountered, they all had to drink blood at some point. This wasn’t the best story in the collection, but it definitely set the tone for the rest of it.

My least favorite was probably The New Veterans or Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating. The New Veterans is about a massage therapist who becomes obsessed with one of her patient’s tattoos and somehow rubs away his traumatic memories from the army. This is an interesting idea, I just found the story really long and I wasn’t very invested in it.

Rules for Antarctic Tailgating was a creative idea, but it didn’t interest me as much as the others. It’s exactly what it sounds like. It lays out the rules for tailgating in the Antarctic. These are for tailgating at the Food Chain Games for Team Whale and Team Krill, even though the rules are specifically for Team Krill. I’m pretty sure Russell is referring to the actual animals for the teams. I just didn’t like this story as much as the others, and I found myself speeding through it trying to get to the next one. I think it was the sportiness of the whole story. I don’t enjoy sports and have never been tailgating. So I don’t think this story was for me.

Overall, Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Other Stories was a very different read. I would deem this collection literary fiction, because I can definitely see English students breaking down these stories in a literature class. I don’t think every story was my taste, but I’m glad I read the book. Now I’m curious enough to check out some of Russell’s other work.