Karen Russell. (Photo: Michael Lionstar)

In Karen Russell’s debut novel Swamplandia! (2011), loss propels the story forward. The book, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, follows a family that runs an alligator-wrestling theme park on an island in the Florida Everglades. Mostly narrated by Ava, a 13-year-old girl who has spent her whole life in the park, Swamplandia! is about the interplay of fantasy—Ava’s older sister quite believably elopes with a ghost—and being grounded in cold reality: the death of the family matriarch, the park’s star performer, holds the story together while unraveling the family at its center.

Picking up on the more hallucinatory thread of her novel and running with it in her second collection of short stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove (Knopf, 256 pp., $24.95), Ms. Russell proves herself to be a master of magical realism. Here she introduces us to a vampire couple who suck on lemons to soothe their aching fangs, girls transformed into silkworms, a flock of seagulls that steal objects from the future, dead presidents reincarnated as horses, Antarctic tailgating and a tattoo that comes to life.

Ms. Russell mines the theme of loss even deeper in these new stories. A vampire’s loss of his ability to fly threatens his relationship with his mate. In the story about the gulls, the teenage protagonist loses his chance to go to a pre-college academic program when his mother loses her job at a home for the mentally impaired after she is blamed for the loss of a pin that kept a window shut. A soldier in “The New Veterans” mourns a buddy lost in an IED explosion. In “The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis,” a group of teenage boys is forced to confront the mysterious disappearance of a classmate they bullied, a boy who’d lost his prized bunny rabbit, when he seemingly reappears in the form of a scarecrow.

Ms. Russell tends to lean heavily on metaphor. It is at once her greatest asset and her biggest liability. When her language gets too florid, as it did at times in Swamplandia! and does in this collection as well, the worlds she constructs can be overly lush, too humid with thick embroidery to ring true. But there is an exuberance to her descriptive abilities, a kind of ludic writerly joy in the process that translates to a readerly thrill in the results. On one of the homesteads on the rain-starved Nebraska frontier that serves as the setting for “Proving Up,” there are “thirty evil turkeys that have heads like scratched mosquito bites” and a “tarantula [that] had closed around the bedpost like a small, gloved hand.” To an ancient vampire in the title story, a teenage girl “smells like hard water and glycerin.”

Ms. Russell is at her best alternating between the wildly fantastical and the utterly banal, especially when she finds a way to fuse the two together. The anthropomorphic scarecrow from “Eric Mutis,” for instance, eventually appears in a New Jersey city of “neon alleys, construction pits, dogs in purses, homeless women with powerful smells and opinions ...” It helps that these stories are intertwined like clues to one another’s riddles. The protagonist of “Eric Mutis” refers to the silence that came after bullying a classmate being “as essential to our friendship as ... blood is to a vampire.” But in “Vampires,” we learn that blood actually isn’t essential to these creatures. In “The New Veterans,” a soldier bleeds to death after an explosion. Back in “Eric Mutis,” the scarecrow bleeds straw from a hole, and the story’s protagonist catches, on TV, “a news shot of a foreign soldier watching blood spill from his head with an expression of extraordinary tranquility.” A similar expression to the soldier’s is worn by a child whom the protagonist and his friends assault at school. The casual violence of the playground finds its echo in the outright devastation of the battleground. These moments of realism that poke through the metaphor, Ms. Russell suggests, are also dangerous myths.

Two stories that come midway through the book—“The Barn at the End of Our Term,” about a seemingly random group of deceased U.S. presidents reincarnated as horses, and “Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating,” which is exactly that, the sporting event in question being an absurdly imbalanced contest between whales and tiny crustaceans called krill—suffer by juxtaposition with Ms. Russell’s finer performances. They come off as gimmicky and slight, the filler necessary to round out a collection. They reveal the nature of the high-wire act that is Ms. Russell’s brand of magical realism: when the conceit is too precious, the reader’s suspension of disbelief starts to crumble.

Not that these minor efforts don’t have their pleasures. Despite its silly premise—an elaborate riff on “buying the farm”—“The Barn” does manage to keenly convey the dead presidents’ metaphysical quandary: is this barn heaven or something more sinister? (Or is it just mundane?) The story’s protagonist is Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th president of the United States, whose election in 1876 was its own mixture of fantasy and fact—the popular vote favored his adversary, Gov. Samuel J. Tilden of New York, and the electoral votes were disputed because of fraud committed by both parties. In Ms. Russell’s story, he desperately needs to believe that a sheep in an adjacent pasture is the reincarnation of his wife. The afterlife is profoundly lonely, and the sheep “perks up when Rutherford trots over.” Then again, Ms. Russell writes, “It might be his imagination.”

sdouglas@observer.com

Youth and Beauty 

Ah, Karen Russell. Or, as the Swamplandia! author might render it, Karen Russell! Never has a young author provoked such envy since that little minx Freudenberger. (Is it a girl thing?) But back to Ms. Russell: The 29-year-old phenom was pegged as an under-40 author to watch on that queasiness-inducing New Yorker list last summer, and now it's time to actually watch her--in a conversation with the novelist Kevin Brockmeier moderated by dreamy Granta editor John Freeman. Us, jealous? Why ever would you ask? ... We're all young once, of course. It used to be that all the hot things wanted to make movies. The old downtown gang is the subject of the new doc Blank City, opening today at the IFC Center. Jim Jarmusch and John Waters, among others, drop in to explain why they haven't made a good flick since the 1980s. 

Karen Russell, McNally Jackson, 52 Prince Street, 7 p.m.; Blank City at IFC Center, 323 Sixth Avenue, visit ifccenter.com for showtimes and tickets

Thursday, April 7

Company Policy

What do you get when your TV, the New York Philharmonic and Stephen Sondheim have a drunken threeway? A production of Sondheim's Company starring Christina Hendricks, Neil Patrick Harris, Stephen Colbert and Jon Cryer. (Charlie Sheen, alas, was busy rehearsing for his turn as Sweeney Todd.) Not everyone in the cast is a TV carpet-bagger: Patti Lupone gets the show-stopping "Ladies Who Lunch," and Tony winner Anika Noni Rose plays Marta. It won't be a walk in the park (with George) for the performers. Says Ms. Rose, "This feels plenty staged to me--with sweat running down the back of my neck! It's not gonna be some cute little performance with a book in hand." Thankfully, Ms. Rose assures us most of her co-stars have the requisite stage experience: "You don't just jump into Sondheim. It's like saying, 'I'd love to do some crosswords. I'll take the Times Sunday.'" Good luck, Mr. Colbert! 

New York Philharmonic, Avery Fisher Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, 7:30 p.m. (performances continue through Saturday), nyphil.org

Friday, April 8

Yale to the Chief 

Boola-boola! It's a Yalien invasion when the Ivy's Glee Club celebrates its 150th anniversary with a concert at Carnegie Hall. Maybe it's just an allergic reaction to New Haven, but boy, do these kids have spirit! So if you're looking to meet a spouse who can bear you babies with a legacy advantage, this is the spot to be. We used to think glee clubs were dorky, but that was before a certain hit TV show came along. "I do watch Glee, but I think they're more of a show choir than a glee club," sniffed Emily Howell, club president. Duly noted--so yeah, still dorky! ... One performer who doesn't have a dorky bone in her body? Catherine Deneuve, that's who. The Gallic stunner is celebrated tonight with a special screening of the new documentary Catherine Deneuve, belle et bien là, at the French Institute. Ms. Deneuve has been a star since the 1960s, and she's still doing great work, as anyone who saw her smoke up a storm in A Christmas Tale can attest. The lady even made Repulsion attractive.

Yale Glee Club, Carnegie Hall, concert at 7:30 p.m., tickets at carnegiehall.org; Catherine Deneuve, Tinker Auditorium at French Institute, 22 East 60th Street, RSVP at cinema@fiaf.org

Saturday, April 9

Beer Summit

Hey, art world--enough with the white wine! It's so damn civilized. If you really want to get those creative juices flowing, you need something a bit more festive (if not illegal!). How about beer? The RH Gallery's latest installation-art piece, the Kunst Biergarten, is an indoor suds-haus inspired by the Munich-based artist Wolfgang Ellenrieder (how very Bavarian!), whose art is on view in the gallery. The Biergarten is meant to start a conversation about contemporary art, some of which one may need to be half-drunk to appreciate! The curators and critics invited were asked to submit possible conversation topics with their RSVP. Here's a freebie from the Eight-Day Week: How many brews will it take before somebody stumbles into one of Mr. Ellenrieder's gorgeous canvasses? Prost!

RH Gallery, 137 Duane Street, 5 p.m., invitation only

Sunday, April 10

Silence Is Golden

Want to pick up a Laurie Simmons print without getting out of your PJs? BAMart's silent auction is quieter than most: Bidding for items by the likes of Jeff Koons, Richard Serra and Cindy Sherman takes place largely online, making the charity ritual less like the game of sneaky one-upmanship we all know and love (watching people slink up to your coveted item is half the fun!) and more like the online auctions we've all been doing late at night for years, ending up with too many misshapen "vintage" cashmere sweaters in the bargain. Let your computer do the bidding for you and enjoy yourself at the reception, where Ms. Simmons and Carroll Dunham, honorary artist chairs of the auction, will sip cocktails and tell you about how very proud they are of filmmaker daughter Lena. 

Peter Jay Sharp Building, Dorothy W. Levitt Lobby, 30 Lafayette Avenue (Brooklyn), cocktail reception 3-6 p.m., auction information at bam.org/auction

Monday, April 11

Colons and Canciones

Things could get a little awkward at tonight's Ballet Hispanico spring gala, where perky-but-tough news diva Katie Couric is serving as the event's cochair, and Dr. Jonathan LaPook will be on hand as a vice chair. (Other chairs of various types include Dr. Mehmet Oz, investor Roland Betts, former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and Nora Ephron.) But back to awkward! Dr. LaPook--Couric completists will remember--was the same guy who gave the newscaster that famous on-air colonoscopy. The group will celebrate Ballet Hispanico's 40th year and try not to giggle. ... If you're free for lunch (it's Monday, live a little) drop in on the Matrix Awards, but be warned: Don't take the red pill. If you do, you will discover the mind-bending truth: that the Matrix Awards have nothing whatsoever to do with Keanu Reeves. Instead, the ceremony honors women in communications. It will be hosted by the mistress of on-message and our new First Tablescaper Sandra Lee. Also: That irascible Rosie O'Donnell will present an award to her publicist, Cindi Berger. We're betting on a Medal of Valor. 

Ballet Hispanico Spring Gala, Plaza Hotel's Grand Ballroom, Fifth Avenue at Central Park South, cocktails at 7 p.m., dinner at 7:45 p.m., program to follow, call 212-362-6710 for tickets; Matrix Awards, Waldorf-Astoria, 301 Park Avenue, lunch begins at noon, tickets at nywici.org

Tuesday, April 12

Keith on Smiling p>

Keith Olbermann, you may recall, was a television announcer that yelled a lot, back when Howard Beale was on-trend. Then he left his gig to team up with Al Gore (a guy who never yelled enough). Mr. Olbermann's new show on Current doesn't start for a while, though, so he's got time on his hands to tweet up a storm and moderate panels, like today's Paley Center symposium on Ernie Kovacs, the pioneering television comedian who was actually Letterman back when Letterman was in rubber pants. Other panelists include comedian Robert Smigel of TV Funhouse and Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog fame, and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In producer George Schlatter. Let's hope Triumph shows up to hump Keith's leg. 

The Paley Center for Media, 25 West 52nd Street, 6:30 p.m., tickets at paleycenter.org

Wednesday, April 13

Mass Appeal

You know how Sandra Bullock was always the one you got when Julia Roberts was booked? That's been the rep of Governor Deval Patrick: second-tier Barack Obama. How unfair! Anyway, Mr. Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts (hello? executive experience?), is publishing a memoir, A Reason To Believe, the title of which is a brazen refutation of the title of President Obama's memoir, The Audacity of Hope. (You see, hard-nosed reason beats blind faith every time.) The governor is in New York today, where he'll be meeting with well-wishers from the worlds of business and politics at-pass the mini-muffins!-a private breakfast. The gathering at Random House headquarters will be co-hosted by A Better Chance, the nonprofit organization that sent young Mr. Patrick to preparatory school. Money well spent, we'd say!

Random House, 1745 Broadway, 8 a.m., free books and breakfast for attendees, private event

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_