St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Almost all of the stories in this collection feature child characters who wish to grow up. All but one of the stories (the exception is “Out to Sea”) features a child protagonist, and eight of these are from the first-person perspective of these children. The narrative implies or states that most of the children are 12 or 13 years old, in the uncertain in-between time after true childhood and before adulthood.

Author Karen Russell places most of these characters right at the cusp of childhood and describes the contradictory feeling of fear and curiosity that children feel when confronted with the adult world they do not yet understand but will soon enter. In Ava’s words from the first story, this is the “peculiar knot of fear and wonder and anger, the husk that holds my whole childhood” (5). Big Red from “City of Shells” feels that same anticipation and fear, which is described as “that unshucked, unsafe feeling. It was with her all the time, now” (176).

This sense, the knowing that there is something dark and difficult to come without knowing exactly what it entails, is the main subject that Russell tries to capture in almost every story. Most of the characters—almost all of them children—teeter on this edge and, by the end of each tale, have fallen over it in one form or another. Often, some trauma or difficult event triggers this entrance into the beginnings of adulthood.

For example, it’s implied that Ava in the first story was sexually assaulted by a stranger on the property; she has her first sexual experience, which she had wanted, but it is a dark, traumatic event. Conversely, Ollie in “The Star-Gazer’s Log of Summer-Time Crime” almost commits sexual assault and realizes that the crime they are committing in stealing sea turtles is not harmless or funny. In fact, it will result in the deaths of hundreds of baby turtles, a consequence he cannot undo. In “Accident Brief, Occurrence # 00/422,” Tek becomes stranded on a glacier with little hope of rescue before he realizes that he had previously been acting childishly.

In many of the stories, this transition to adulthood also reveals a kind of loneliness for the characters. In “Z. Z.’s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers,” Elijah realizes that he cannot share sleep with anyone, not Emma and not Ogli any longer. He must confront his nightmares alone. In “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” one of the things Claudette learns is to stop thinking of herself as part of a pack and instead have concern primarily for herself. Although he is not a child, even Sawtooth in “Out to Sea” ends the story confronted with his own isolation.