The title story of Karen Russell’s debut collection is a lively, playful romp from start to finish. A fantastical farce, the story follows a group of girls raised by wolves being retrained as humans. “Our parents wanted something better for us; they wanted us to get braces, use towels, be fully bilingual. When the nuns showed up, our parents couldn’t refuse their offer. The nuns, they said, would make us naturalized citizens of human society. We would go to St. Lucy’s to study a better culture.”   Quotations from “The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock” are interspersed throughout the narrative, as the girls proceed through each stage of the ‘humanizing’ process, which involves getting a name, learning to be bipedal, and resisting the urge to bite, lick, howl, or mark one’s territory…”Those were the days when we dreamed of rivers and meat. Full-moon nights were the worst!” Mirabella, the youngest of the group, is having the most difficulty adjusting: “Mirabella would rip foamy chunks out of the church pews and replace them with ham bones and girl dander. She loved to roam the grounds wagging her invisible  tail. (We all had a hard time giving that up. When we got excited, we would fall to the ground and start pumping our backsides. Back in those days we could pump at rabbity velocities. Que horror! Sister Maria frowned, looking more than a little jealous.)”

The consciousness of the narrator Claudette (formerly known as  TRRRR!) grows increasingly “human” throughout the story as she acquires the new rulesof the game: “This wasn’t like the woods, where you had to be your fastest and your strongest and your bravest self. Different sorts of calculations were required to survive at the home.” With a wolf’s instinct to please, she finds herself subconsciously reprimanding and rooting herself on: “mouth shut, shoes on feet.” In a final wink of irony, when Claudette visits her home cave after graduation she realizes what it means to be fully human – to tell a lie.

For any female who has ever felt like she has the feral trappings of a werewolf upbringing buried deep inside, this story will ring true in a way that will have you dreaming of rivers, meat and full-moon prowls. A refreshing and ironic twist of catholic school meets little red riding hood.