Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

Feb. 12

All of 31 and Russell has already had a whiff of victory but not tasted it (her debut novel was one of three finalists in a year that saw the Pulitzer board awarding no prize for literature). Better this than the sophomore slump, but this is in fact Russell’s second short-story collection. The title story is as advertised—two married vampires talking in a lemon grove. The husband has “a tan that won’t fade until I die (which I never will).” The second offering is about daughters of samurai warriors, “but of course there is no way for anyone to verify that now.” But of course! What a quaint sense of humor; what surprises spring from Russell’s imagination; how she captures the way we humans think, whether we are eternally dead or Japanese in kimonos.

—Jimmy So

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