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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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St. Lucy’s
Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Imaginative Karen Russell’s
debut collection of short stories titled, St. Lucy’s
Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, presents an imaginative and creative
voice that is unlike that of any other writer I’ve read. Russell is about 25
years old, and the vitality of her voice, and the lack of limitations on her
definition of the world shows in most of these stories. Here’s an excerpt, from
the beginning of the story titled, “Haunting Olivia,” pp. 26-31: My brother Wallow has been
kicking around Gannon’s Boat Graveyard for more than an hour, too embarrassed
to admit that he doesn’t see any ghosts. Instead, he slaps at the ocean with
jilted fury. Curse words come piping out of his
snorkel. He keeps pausing to readjust the diabolical goggles. The diabolical goggles were
designed for little girls. They are pink, with a floral snorkel attached to the
side. They have scratchproof lenses and an adjustable band. Wallow says that
we are going to use them to find our dead sister, Olivia. My brother and I have been
making midnight scavenging trips to Gannon’s all summer. It’s a watery
junkyard, a place where people pay to abandon their old boats. Gannon, the
grizzled, tattooed undertaker, tows wrecked ships into his marina. Battered
sailboats and listing skiffs, yachts with stupid names—Knot at Work and Sail-la- Vie—the paint peeling from their puns. They sink beneath
the water in slow increments, covered with rot and barnacles. Their masts
jut out at weird angles. The marina is an open, easy grave to rob. We ride
our bikes along the rock wall, coasting quietly past Gannon’s tin shack, and
hop off at the derelict pier. Then we creep down to the ladder, jump onto the
nearest boat, and loot. It’s dubious booty. We
mostly find stuff with no resale value: soggy flares and UHF radios, a
one-eyed cat yowling on a dinghy. But the goggles are a first. We found them
floating in a live-bait tank, deep in the cabin of La Calavera, a swamped “They looked just like
regular baitfish, bro,” Wallow said. “Only deader.” I told my brother that I
was familiar with the definition of a ghost. Not that I believed a word of
it, you understand. Now Wallow is trying the
goggles out in the marina, to see if his vision extends beyond the tank. I’m
dangling my legs over the edge of the pier, half expecting something to grab
me and pull me under. “Wallow! You see anything phantasmic yet?” “Nothing,” he bubbles
morosely through the snorkel. “I can’t see a thing.” I’m not surprised. The
water in the boat basin is a cloudy mess. But I’m impressed by Wallow’s
one-armed doggy paddle. Wallow shouldn’t be
swimming at all. Last Thursday, he slipped on one of the banana peels that Granana leaves around the house. I know. I didn’t think
it could happen outside of cartoons, either. Now his right arm is in a
plaster cast, and in order to enter the water he has to hold it above his
head. It looks like he’s riding an aquatic unicycle. That buoyancy, it’s
unexpected. On land, Wallow’s a loutish kid. He bulldozes whatever gets in
his path: baby strollers, widowers, me. For brothers, Wallow and I
look nothing alike. I’ve got Dad’s blond hair and blue eyes, his embraceably lanky physique. Olivia was equally
Heartland, apple cheeks and unnervingly white teeth. Not Wallow. He’s got
this dental affliction that gives him a tusky,
warthog grin. He wears his hair in a greased pompadour and has a thick pelt
of back hair. There’s no accounting for it. Dad jokes that our mom must have
had dalliances with a Minotaur. Wallow is not Wallow’s real
name, of course. His real name is Waldo Swallow. Just like I’m Timothy Sparrow
and Olivia was—is—Olivia Lark. Our parents used to be bird enthusiasts.
That’s how they met: Dad spotted my mother on a bird-watching tour of the
swamp, her beauty magnified by his lOx binoculars.
Dad says that by the time he lowered them the spoonbills he’d been trying to
see had scattered, and he was in love. When Wallow
and I were very young, they used to take us on their creepy bird excursions,
kayaking down island canals, spying on blue herons and coots. These days,
they’re not enthusiastic about much, feathered or otherwise. They leave us
with Granana for months at a time. Shortly after Olivia’s
death, my parents started traveling regularly in the “Hey!” Wallow is directly
below me, clutching the rails of the ladder. “Move over.” He climbs up and heaves his
big body onto the pier. Defeat puddles all around him. Behind the diabolical
goggles, his eyes narrow into slits. “Did you see them?” Wallow just grunts. “Here.”
He wrestles the lady-goggles off his face and thrusts them at me. “I can’t
swim with this cast, and these bitches are too small for my skull. You try
them.” I sigh and strip off my
pajamas, bobbling before him. The elastic band of the goggles bites into the
back of my head. Somehow, wearing them makes me feel even more naked. My
penis is curling up in the salt air like a small pink snail. Wallow points
and laughs. “Sure you don’t want to try
again?” I ask him. From the edge of the pier, the ocean looks dark and
unfamiliar, like the liquid shadow of something truly awful. “Try again,
Wallow. Maybe it’s just taking a while for your eyes to adjust. . . .” Wallow holds a finger to
his lips. He points behind me. Boats are creaking in the wind, waves slap
against the pilings, and then I hear it, too, the distinct thunk of boots on wood. Someone is walking down the pier.
We can see the tip of a lit cigarette, suspended in the dark. We hear a man’s
gargly cough. “Looking for buried
treasure, boys?” Gannon laughs. He keeps walking towards us. “You know, the
court still considers it trespassing, be it land or sea.” Then he recognizes
Wallow. He lets out the low, mournful whistle that all the grown-ups on the
island use to identify us now. “Oh, son. Don’t tell me
you’re out here looking for. . .” “My dead sister?” Wallow
asks with terrifying cheer. “Good guess!” “You’re not going to find her
in my marina, boys.” In the dark, Gannon is a
huge stencil of a man, wisps of smoke curling from his nostrils. There is a
long, pulsing silence, during which Wallow stares at him, squaring his jaw.
Then Gannon shrugs. He stubs out his cigarette and shuffles back towards the
shore. “All right, bro,” Wallow says. “It’s go time.” He takes my
elbow and gentles me down the planks with such tenderness that I am suddenly
very afraid. But there’s no sense making the plunge slow and unbearable. I
take a running leap down the pier— “Ayyyyiii!” —and launch over the water. It’s my favorite moment: when
I’m one toe away from flight and my body takes over. The choice is made, but
the consequence is still just an inky shimmer beneath me. And I’m flying, I’m
rushing to meet my own reflection—Gah! Then comes the less
beautiful moment when I’m up to my eyeballs in tar water, and the goggles
fill with stinging brine. And, for what seems like a very long time, I can’t
see anything at all, dead or alive. When my vision starts to
clear, I see a milky, melting light moving swiftly above the ocean floor.
Drowned moonbeams, I think at first. Only there is no moon tonight. If you’re willing to give a young
author a try, I suggest Karen Russell’s St. Lucy’s
Home. Steve Hopkins,
November 20, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the December
2006 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/St.
Lucy's Home.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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