Product Information
One of our Bloggers Books of the Month for March
Recommended by Eve's Alexandria
Have you ever read a story about a Minotaur migrating west with his human family? Or about two brothers who set sail in the exoskeleton of a giant crab to find the ghost of their drowned sister? Or about fifteen adolescent girls raised by wolves being introduced to civilisation by nuns? No? Well, here is your chance.
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is an alchemical display. Each story here is unique in its variety. They transcend traditional genre boundaries, segueing from fantasy to horror to contemporary fiction with perfect composure, and wreaking havoc with our expectations at every opportunity. Nobody reading the jocular title could anticipate the creepy ambience of the book’s opening story, ‘Ava Wrestles the Alligator’, in which a young girl rescues her sister from an insatiable spectral lover. Nor the bittersweet humour of ‘The Star-Gazer’s Log of Summer-time Crime’ in which a boy pretends to be a criminal mastermind when he is really a budding junior astronomer.
What the stories do share in common are their young protagonists, all of whom are discovering the harsh, peculiar and blackly funny realities of their worlds as they run or trip or wander unaware into adulthood. The title story, with its snarling snapping wolf-girls learning to speak and act like young ladies, is the perfect metaphor for shedding the easy instinctive skin of childhood for the contradictions and discomforts of womanhood. But, like all the stories here, it is also a joy beyond the metaphor, simply by virtue of being what it is: a weird and deftly written work of fiction.
It is good to see a writer like Russell doing something different with words; creating similes and juxtaposing ideas that are surprising, and fresh, and provocative. Books like this should be read and championed and forced upon people at every possible opportunity. Hence...
Bookmark & Share
Be the first to review this product!
Price: £7.99 £6.99
