11-20-08 Week Twelve "Russle Among her Peers"

Today in class we continued our discussion of Karen Russel and I thought for this Blog entry I would talk about the title story of her book "St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves". Through one perspective the story is simplistic in its structure, the narrative is a list of the levels of assimilation. Structuring her story in this way allows Russel to be more creative in description and more loose, we know the progression of the story and there is not necessarily the burden of creating a more concrete plot.

Emotionally, not analytically, my response to the story was sadness. The idea of detachment from the wolf life is not only an allegory of cultural assimilation, but also of the personal journey away from one's immediate family. There is time, in everyone's life, where the realization that mother and father are not perfect, and possibly quite f****ed up occurs. This moment can be extremely disillusioning and depressing. There is a sense of isolation we see in the narrator as she returns to a wolf pack that she has completely outgrown, and the emotional response to that outgrowth is a deep and private mourning.

I wish it was this story that Russel was expanding into a book as I think it could have possibility to be an amazing novel. Kind of like a Harry Potter gone wrong, where the innocent child does not discover that they are actually a magic wizard but that they are human...not so good. If she slowed down the narrative and expanded it I think there could be a lot done with the sisters and the nuns as well as the relation to the family. Although to work, as I discussed in my earlier blog I think Russel would really need to commit herself to a fantastic world, establish the "wolf people" and werewolves more firmly in this altered reality. It would be a commitment that drew her away from the genre of "literary fiction" and closer to "fantasy", but honestly I think this story in a "fantasy" novel would be fabulous. There is no shame in writing "fantasy" some of the most amazing and epic works fall into this genre, and I don't think people should be so quick to turn up their noses to works on worlds that are not ours. It is possible to write fantasy and be "literary" so lets all relax and embrace the fantastic elements of Russell's work despite what genre they place her in.