PositiveBookforumAs most of the stories in Karen Russell\'s madcap yet wistful debut collection attest, the Florida Everglades ooze decay ... [Russell\'s] theme-park details evoke George Saunders, and her descriptions of lush, decadent flora echo Joy Williams. But Russell\'s antic sensibility above all recalls cartoons; her imagination is a combustible, pinwheeling thing, and it animates these coming-of-age vignettes with a ferocious absurdity ... These...are strange, lingering tales—yet less for their inventive flourishes than for their ability to capture a kind of discomfiting fear that comes with adulthood; the protagonists are propelled out of the adolescent here-and-now into the world beyond. Both stories are marked by an awareness of the passage of time and the tendency toward betrayal—of oneself and of those one loves.
Jessa Crispin
MixedThe Los Angeles TimesGlibness aside, there is a powerful, belligerent urgency animating Crispin's quest: Can art save your life? The author takes admirable risks in exposing desperate interior states, but straightforward biographical details are hard to come by. Most information comes pre-packaged with emotion or interpretation, and as a result there isn't much space for the reader to form his or her own impressions.
