I'd rather be a dog and bay at the moon

I love reading. Reading devours my time. When you open a book you are delving into something that is none of your own. A book is created completely from someones opinions, thoughts and how they view the world. A book is the authors mind. If I like the book or not is up to me, but it is theirs and not mine so it does not matter what I think of it.

Of coarse every devoted reader who finishes a book enjoys spending hours going through the symbolism and messages hidden in pages. Or, shall i say, the symbolism and messages they THINK are hidden in the pages.

Sorry literature majors but no matter how good you are at interpreting the misteries of the universe, unless you ask the author him/her self you have no idea what-so-ever of what they wanted their book to say.

Then there are those books that you just have no clue what they could mean.

Like this book. St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves by Karen Russell.

When I read the back of this book it talked about cute fantastical tales of girls in floating crab shells and ghost love stories. I was like, "This sounds fun!" When I actually read the book I was like, "There must be something wrong with this woman."

The book is a collection of short stories that inhabit the same world but have nothing to do with each other. The world is this one with odd twists like ghosts and werewolves. That was not what was wrong with it.

Niether was the writing. It was fabulous! Descriptions are vibrant and alive. She is a master stories teller; gets you interested in the story immediately.

It was the atmosphere. Depressing. All the kids have either one parent or their parents are unhappy. The kids are getting into bad stuff or are bad already. They have weird disorders or are shockingly normal. The adults are of the depressing breed of big dreaming failures. Losers who know they are losers. That's awful.

What bugged me most of all was that none of the stories had an end. They ended but they had no end. Nothing was resolved. I think she meant it to be that way; maybe an example of how life works or something but it disconcerted me. I think everything I felt was kind of what she wanted maybe(I know that sentence was full of uncertainty, it was meant to be.) As if she was poking fun at you from under a sarcastic dour mask. I large joke that was meant frightened you more then amused you. Made me uncomfortable.

I think i sort of enjoyed it. Now thinking back on it I am getting kind of panicky; "Oh crap please don't make me read it again!"

It was odd in a truthful way and that was frightening.

I do not know what it was supposed to say but i would absolutely love to ask Karen Russell about it.

At least, I think I would.