In her new collection of stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove (Knopf), Karen Russell continues her exploration into the fantastical with characters including the eponymous bloodsuckers, human silkworms, and dead U.S. presidents reanimated as farm horses. But her real subject matter here (as in an earlier book of stories and a novel, Swamplandia!, that was a finalist for last year’s Pulitzer) is storytelling—specifically the role of memory at the intersection of personal and national histories and the ways in which stories can both harm and heal.
“The New Veterans” is also about memory, history, and storytelling. In that story, a new program has been launched to provide free sessions with a massage therapist to veterans. The narrator, Beverly, arrives in the treatment room to find her first client asleep on his stomach on the massage table. On his back is an extraordinarily vivid tattoo. She can’t tell what the tattoo is of, only that by comparison, the rest of his skin looks “blank,” and the room they’re in “miserably generic.” When the man awakes, she tells us, so does the image on his back. Beverly listens as the vet tells the story of the tattoo, which is the story of the day in Iraq that his friend was killed by an IED.
In American Honor Killings, David McConnell explores male violence.
In The Round House, Louise Erdrich settles for an easy target.
Dan Baum’s Gun Guys could use less Baum, more guys.
A conversation with Natalie Y. Moore and Lance Williams, authors of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation.
Plus: Short takes on new books by local authors.
