On a book review, I had read ‘Swamplandia’ by Karen Russell and it was awesome. Deceptively easy going to read and springing darker things on you when you don’t expect them. Very embedded in a Florida sensibility that I’m not so familar with but with a heroine (and friends and family) that ends up with a ‘good ending’. Fun. So I picked up a follow up that came out of short stories – ‘Vampires in the Lemon Grove’. I’m half way through, but I’m so mesmerized by each story that I wanted to get that down. Each of the stories I’ve gone through starts with a feeling that they might be kind of boring and they slowly turn the boiling water up and end up just incapacitating me to do anything but read. Each one has some point where things happen in a way that everyone’s autonomy just disappears – often literally. Scary stuff. In a sense, they’re old fashioned ‘horror stories’. But they catch you off guard and you don’t anticipate it. Each one starts (as I said) by making me think this is a literary work of seriousness. Then it sinks the knife. Absolutely wonderful.