St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves | Karen Russell | Review

St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves | Karen Russell | Review

• Wednesday, 20 November 2013

“I look for my sister but it's hopeless. The goggles are all fogged up. Every fish burns lantern-bright, and I can't tell the living from the dead. It's all just blurry light, light smeared like some celestial fingerprint all over the rocks and the reef and the sunken garbage. Olivia could be everywhere.” - Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell is a collection of short-stories that are mostly about children going through some kind of trouble while they do their best to grow into the strange world of adults. The stories are all different but still very much alike, filled with a lot imagination, a few magical elements and tons of strange quirky twists. 

I have to admit that I had quite high expectations when I started reading this book. I thought that a collection of short-stories filled with surreal elements and quirky strange children would be right up my alley. And in some parts this collection did live up to my expectations because I really enjoyed a few of the stories! My favorite stories were Haunting Olivia, St.Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and The Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crime. These were the kind of stories that I kept thinking about even weeks after I finished the book. Then there was a few stories in the collection that I liked or thought were pretty decent. But then there was a few stories (maybe two or three?) that I couldn't get my head around.

So, I have pretty mixed feelings about this book because there is a few stories in here that are really worth reading! I think that Karen Russell is a talented writer with an amazing imagination. But I didn't think every story was worth my time. I guess this is the case with most books with short-stories. Every story is not going to please every reader.

I think that St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is an interesting book, a reading experience I wouldn't want to be without. But I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Some stories were a bit too strange even for my taste and some stories were too much alike to stand out from each other. With some really good and unique stories and some that I could live without I give St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves 3/5 stars.

This post was written by regular reviewer Niina, get to know her here.