Vampires in the Lemon Grove
And other stories
(Sprache: Englisch)
From the author of the novel Swamplandia!-a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize-comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author's gifts at their inimitable best. Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a...
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From the author of the novel Swamplandia!-a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize-comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author's gifts at their inimitable best. Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family's disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship. Named a Best Book of the Year by: The Boston Globe O, The Oprah Magazine Huffington Post The A.V. Club A Washington Post Notable Book An NPR Great Read of 2013
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Vampires in the Lemon GroveIn October, the men and women of Sorrento harvest the primofiore, or first flowering fruit, the most succulent lemons; in March, the yellow bianchetti ripen, followed in June by the green verdelli. In every season you can find me sitting at my bench, watching them fall. Only one or two lemons tumble from the branches each hour, but I ve been sitting here so long their falls seem contiguous, close as raindrops. My wife has no patience for this sort of meditation. Jesus Christ, Clyde, she says. You need a hobby.
Most people mistake me for a small, kindly Italian grandfather, a nonno. I have an old nonno s coloring, the dark walnut stain peculiar to southern Italians, a tan that won t fade until I die (which I never will). I wear a neat periwinkle shirt, a canvas sunhat, black suspenders that sag at my chest. My loafers are battered but always polished. The few visitors to the lemon grove who notice me smile blankly into my raisin face and catch the whiff of some sort of tragedy; they whisper that I am a widower, or an old man who has survived his children. They never guess that I am a vampire.
Santa Francesca s Lemon Grove, where I spend my days and nights, was part of a Jesuit convent in the 1800s. Today it s privately owned by the Alberti family, the prices are excessive, and the locals know to buy their lemons elsewhere. In summers a teenage girl named Fila mans a wooden stall at the back of the grove. She s painfully thin, with heavy black bangs. I can tell by the careful way she saves the best lemons for me, slyly kicking them under my bench, that she knows I am a monster. Sometimes she ll smile vacantly in my direction, but she never gives me any trouble. And because of her benevolent indifference to me, I feel a swell of love for the girl.
Fila makes the lemonade and monitors the hot dog machine, watching the meat rotate on wire spigots. I m fascinated by
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this machine. The Italian name for it translates as carousel of beef. Who would have guessed at such a device two hundred years ago? Back then we were all preoccupied with visions of apocalypse; Santa Francesca, the foundress of this very grove, gouged out her eyes while dictating premonitions of fire. What a shame, I often think, that she foresaw only the end times, never hot dogs.
A sign posted just outside the grove reads:
CIGERETTE PIE
HEAT DOGS
GRANITE DRINKS
Santa Francesca s Limonata
THE MOST REFRISHING DRANK ON THE PLENET!!
Every day, tourists from Wales and Germany and America are ferried over from cruise ships to the base of these cliffs. They ride the funicular up here to visit the grove, to eat heat dogs with speckly brown mustard and sip lemon ices. They snap photographs of the Alberti brothers, Benny and Luciano, teenage twins who cling to the trees wooden supports and make a grudging show of harvesting lemons, who spear each other with trowels and refer to the tourist women as vaginas in Italian slang. Buona sera, vaginas! they cry from the trees. I think the tourists are getting stupider. None of them speak Italian anymore, and these new women seem deaf to aggression. Often I fantasize about flashing my fangs at the brothers, just to keep them in line.
As I said, the tourists usually ignore me; perhaps it s the dominoes. A few years back, I bought a battered red set from Benny, a prop piece, and this makes me invisible, sufficiently banal to be hidden in plain sight. I have no real interest in the game; I mostly stack the pieces into little houses and corrals.
At sunset, the tourists all around
A sign posted just outside the grove reads:
CIGERETTE PIE
HEAT DOGS
GRANITE DRINKS
Santa Francesca s Limonata
THE MOST REFRISHING DRANK ON THE PLENET!!
Every day, tourists from Wales and Germany and America are ferried over from cruise ships to the base of these cliffs. They ride the funicular up here to visit the grove, to eat heat dogs with speckly brown mustard and sip lemon ices. They snap photographs of the Alberti brothers, Benny and Luciano, teenage twins who cling to the trees wooden supports and make a grudging show of harvesting lemons, who spear each other with trowels and refer to the tourist women as vaginas in Italian slang. Buona sera, vaginas! they cry from the trees. I think the tourists are getting stupider. None of them speak Italian anymore, and these new women seem deaf to aggression. Often I fantasize about flashing my fangs at the brothers, just to keep them in line.
As I said, the tourists usually ignore me; perhaps it s the dominoes. A few years back, I bought a battered red set from Benny, a prop piece, and this makes me invisible, sufficiently banal to be hidden in plain sight. I have no real interest in the game; I mostly stack the pieces into little houses and corrals.
At sunset, the tourists all around
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Autoren-Porträt von Karen Russell
Karen Russell, a native of Miami, won the 2012 National Magazine Award for fiction, and her first novel, Swamplandia! (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is a graduate of the Columbia MFA program, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2012 Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She lives in Philadelphia.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Karen Russell
- 2014, 256 Seiten, Masse: 13,4 x 20,2 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin Random House
- ISBN-10: 0307947475
- ISBN-13: 9780307947475
- Erscheinungsdatum: 14.01.2014
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Astonishing. . . . Vampires in the Lemon Grove stands out as Russell s best book . . . with prose so alive it practically backflips off the page. San Francisco Chronicle From apparent influences as disparate as George Saunders, Saki, Stephen King, Carson McCullers and Joy Williams, [Russell] has fashioned a quirky, textured voice that is thoroughly her own: lyrical and funny, fantastical and meditative. Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
One of the most innovative, inspired short-story collections in the past decade. . . . There s absolutely no living author quite like Karen Russell. Michael Schaub, NPR
Karen Russell s imagination is once again on full, Technicolor, mind-bending display. . . . Russell s stories will be seizing our imaginations and nibbling at the edges of our nightmares for years to come. The Miami Herald
Hilarious, exquisite, first-rate. Joy Williams, The New York Times Book Review
One of the great American writers of our young century. Maureen Corrigan, NPR
Darkly inventive, demonically driven. Elle
"No one combines the fantastical with the mundane quite like Karen Russell. . . . The stories in Vampires portray ordinary life with an otherworldly twist in a fascinating and unexpected way. And yet these haunting tales are written with such clarity and recognizable perspectives that they manage the greatest feat of all: in the surreal, we see ourselves. Jessica Gentile, Paste Magazine, #1 Best Book of the Year
Sea deep, scary smart, richly inventive. More
Delightfully weird. Esquire
A writer to track and to treasure. Chicago Tribune
In another ten years Russell will be her generation s George Saunders: the writer whose books are stolen and studied, flashed like badges, and worn to death with rereading. . . . Breathtaking. The Boston Globe
One of the most remarkable fantasists
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writing today. Elizabeth Hand, The Washington Post
Witty, and wise, and brimming with vitality. . . . In Russell s stories, malice strolls with morality, horror tangos with humor, and the spirits of Franz Kafka and Flannery O Connor meet with unexpected comity. . . . With a voice that could spring from an unleashed demon or an angel on amphetamines Russell fills this exuberant collection with life s radiance and shadows. Richmond Times-Dispatch
Consistently arresting . . . startling . . . profound. . . . Even more impressive than Russell s critically acclaimed novel. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Dazzlingly strange. . . . Vacillating between horror and humor, Russell s writing recalls both George Saunders and vintage Stephen King, sometimes simultaneously. Time Out Chicago
A darkly surreal treat. Wired.com
Eight new cages of horror and heart and winding metamorphoses that would take a normal writer a lifetime to dream into being. Interview magazine
Bone-chilling fantasy and horror underlined with social commentary. People
As Russell s imagination soars, so does our joy in reading this collection. Oprah.com
Wildly inventive. . . . Wondrously strange and moving. Reader s Digest
In these stories, familiar human emotions leap into relief against backdrops of almost Tim Burton-like weirdness. . . . [Russell s] stories are as robust as can be. New York magazine
Karen Russell s stories defy definition. They are at once warm and sinister, a bubble bath with a shark fin lurking underneath the suds. The Millions
Clever as hell. BookRiot
Wildly imaginative. . . . Gorgeous. . . . Russell has once again mapped the dark country between our everyday and more primal selves. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A master of magical realism. New York Observer
Powerful. . . . Russell pulls the rug out on our imagination, creating perplexing, surreal scenarios that bump into the common reality that most of us take for granted. Minneapolis Star Tribune
Wondrously strange and moving. Reader s Digest
Nearly flawless . . . . Russell s best work manages to both create a fascinating, surreal world and coax meaning out of it. The Onion s A.V. Club
Witty, and wise, and brimming with vitality. . . . In Russell s stories, malice strolls with morality, horror tangos with humor, and the spirits of Franz Kafka and Flannery O Connor meet with unexpected comity. . . . With a voice that could spring from an unleashed demon or an angel on amphetamines Russell fills this exuberant collection with life s radiance and shadows. Richmond Times-Dispatch
Consistently arresting . . . startling . . . profound. . . . Even more impressive than Russell s critically acclaimed novel. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Dazzlingly strange. . . . Vacillating between horror and humor, Russell s writing recalls both George Saunders and vintage Stephen King, sometimes simultaneously. Time Out Chicago
A darkly surreal treat. Wired.com
Eight new cages of horror and heart and winding metamorphoses that would take a normal writer a lifetime to dream into being. Interview magazine
Bone-chilling fantasy and horror underlined with social commentary. People
As Russell s imagination soars, so does our joy in reading this collection. Oprah.com
Wildly inventive. . . . Wondrously strange and moving. Reader s Digest
In these stories, familiar human emotions leap into relief against backdrops of almost Tim Burton-like weirdness. . . . [Russell s] stories are as robust as can be. New York magazine
Karen Russell s stories defy definition. They are at once warm and sinister, a bubble bath with a shark fin lurking underneath the suds. The Millions
Clever as hell. BookRiot
Wildly imaginative. . . . Gorgeous. . . . Russell has once again mapped the dark country between our everyday and more primal selves. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A master of magical realism. New York Observer
Powerful. . . . Russell pulls the rug out on our imagination, creating perplexing, surreal scenarios that bump into the common reality that most of us take for granted. Minneapolis Star Tribune
Wondrously strange and moving. Reader s Digest
Nearly flawless . . . . Russell s best work manages to both create a fascinating, surreal world and coax meaning out of it. The Onion s A.V. Club
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