Stag

Trespass Collection #4

by Karen Russell

Feeling alone? Join the party in a darkly comic and deeply felt short story about fragility and resilience in the Mojave Desert by the New York Times bestselling author of Swamplandia!

Still recovering from a brutal breakup, Stan Dobrev crashes a 'divorce party' in the Southern California desert. An unknown extra in a stranger’s drama, he’s on his way back to the bar when a fellow interloper catches his wandering eye. She’s a formidable tortoise named Greeley, trudging through the drunken revelry and chaos like a true survivor. Before the night is over, she’ll lead Stan on a strange journey beyond oblivion.

Karen Russell’s Stag is part of Trespass, a collection of wild stories about animal instincts, human folly, and survival from award-winning, bestselling authors. Read or listen to each in a single sitting.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook, Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary, Animals

40 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 24, 2022

About the author

Karen Russell graduated from Columbia University's MFA program in 2006. Her stories have been featured in The Best American Short Stories, Conjunctions, Granta, The New Yorker, Oxford American, and Zoetrope. Her first book of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was published in September 2006. In November 2009, she was named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree. In June 2010, she was named a New Yorker "20 Under 40" honoree. Her first novel, Swamplandia!, was published in February 2011.

She lives in Washington Heights, New York.

Reviews

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)]

An anonymous middle-aged man attends a divorce party (is this really a thing people do? If so, why??) with a younger woman he met in Vegas. At the party things slowly fall apart while the pet tortoise that was supposed to be a symbol of the couple's fidelity wanders around. It's got a surrealist tone and objectively the writing is fine, but I just did not care about this sad middle-aged man who is selfish and awful. I think this stands out as being the most "something we've seen before" of the collection and it fits oddly with the rest.

[Dead Inside · Rating 5 out of 5]

“All around us the desert whittled at the older silence, chirping and laughing and sighing.”

This is the first Karen Russell book I have read and I was impressed by her knowledge of desert flora and fauna, I love when biology is thrown into the mix of things. I will be reading more from this author.

[Brooke (B for Books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loneliness, separation, isolation.
A divorce party. A tortoise. A load of secrets in an empty bag. Did I always love it? No. Did all those unlikable pieces come together and serve a purpose to bring together meaning? Yes, and it’s very sad. This is exemplary fiction. The nuance is intricate.

[Gareth Is Haunted · Rating 3 out of 5]

A darkly comic tale set within a divorce party. Who even knew divorce parties were a thing?

'Balloons swam in the air above the Royal Table, black and libidinally pink. “RIP MATT AND NIA!” An enormous three-tiered cake hunched like a gargoyle on the buffet table.'

Part 4 of the Trespass Series of Amazon Originals.
This is a tough one to review as I have divided opinions. On one hand, I feel that the whole point of this short story completely eluded me but on the other hand, I really enjoyed the author's writing, which was concise, sharp and humorous.

'Without the anchor of eternity, there are no moorings in this desert, nothing to keep a promise from blowing off.'

Not bad for a short story and it's clear Karen Russel can write.

[Kathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I finished this but got no enjoyment from the story. I’d pass on this one. Not interesting and why did this dude think it was okay to hang out with the little girl? Pointless story. I really wish I could be more positive here but feel it really was a waste of time.

[Liz • りず · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Animals reveal the best and the worst of our natures, don't they? Our kindness, our rapacity."
🐢🏜🎊
A short story on fragility and resilience that is both darkly humorous and deeply poignant. The ethereal, fever-dream imagery presents us with heartfelt ruminations on loneliness, loss, and the destruction of nature and her creatures.

[Sadie Hartmann]

A middle-aged man is his date's plus one at a divorce party. The details of the party are very entertaining and sadly realistic. I even googled "divorce party" to see if this was a real thing. I had heard of a divorcée having an all-women party to celebrate being divorced but never a whole "opposite of a wedding" party complete with the entire guest list from the original ceremony, a cake with a sad replica of the cake topper but with the bride & groom facing away from each other, and other elaborate details.
The narrator was a bit skeevy and honestly, I only wanted to hear more about Greenly, the "divorce tortoise", a pet the couple shared in marriage and was their ring bearer at the wedding.

This story took a strange turn at the end, I wasn't entirely sure of the author's message. I think it was over my head.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lit-fic isn't often a genre that works very well for me, but when it does work, I usually get kind of unreasonable about it. Here, this story works for me. For whatever reason, all the various pieces here coalesce for me into a whole that I can't, and don't want to try to, articulate here. I do know that one of the reasons this story works so well for me is that the writing doesn't take itself too seriously. There's a comedic tone here that works really well with the sadder, more melancholy aspects of the story.

It also doesn't hurt that a desert tortoise named Greeley is a large part of this book, and that the main character spends about a third of it high whilst crashing a divorce party. It's kind of a masterful study in control of authorial tone, balancing the absurd with the meaningful.

I'm genuinely surprised how much I liked this one. The audio version was great as well.

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Tortoise and the Flower Girl
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook released simultaneously with the Audible Original audiobook (February 24 2022).

We people were the monsters crashing their party, weren’t we? The creosote bush scrub, the gypsum outcrops and alluvial fans, the bighorn sheep and kangaroo rats, the chuckwallas and the Gilas with their seething orange-and-pink backs, the twisted junipers and the woolly Joshuas, the burrowing owls and the raspy cactus wrens—this was their home, and we were trashing it. Intruding on an open marriage of species that had survived the Ice Age, but might not survive us. - excerpt from Stag

[3.5]
This was a bizarrely entertaining short story, but mostly not for the conflicts with wildlife and nature which are otherwise the supposed central theme of Amazon Originals' Trespass Collection. The protagonist is going through a midlife crisis and is on a gambling binge where he meets a woman who invites him to be her +1 at a divorce ceremony (are there really such things?). At the ceremony, all of the wedding rituals are re-enacted in reverse order. The couple are declared divorced and walk away from the altar separately, their rings are carried away by the original ring-bearer, their pet tortoise.

At the end, the tortoise crawls away from the afterparty in order to lay eggs on the seashore. She is observed and followed by our protagonist and the flower girl from the wedding / divorce. That's about it, but it certainly kept you reading and wondering what was going to happen next.

Stag is one of six Amazon Kindle eBooks released February 24, 2022 as part of their Amazon Original Trespass Collection of short stories which "Take a walk on the wild side. When nature gets up close and personal, it isn’t always pretty. A fallen tree sparks a poisonous feud between neighbors. A child searches the darkness for the gleam of a tiger’s teeth. A woman holds off a colony of oddly relentless prairie dogs. In unsettling stories that range from horror to magical realism, award-winning authors lay bare the secrets hidden in the land."

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Birds, reptiles, people—you see the whole family tree when you look at a tortoise.'

A tortoise, a con artist, and a 'green' divorce party. What can possibly go wrong?

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stan crashing a divorce ceremony was weird. Stan talking about his daughter was sad.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stag does a good job of exploring the way we as humans can often mask situations and feelings, making it so we can ignore the deeper realities of what is at play. The setting of the divorce party was an intriguing one. It presents an interesting dichotomy that highlights the themes. Russell shines with the pacing and narration of this short story. The end just left me feeling a little short changed.

[Shelley · Rating 2 out of 5]

What even was this story? One minute we're at a divorce party and the next we're finding out that the narrator accidentally got his daughter killed?

[Venus · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a bit hard to place this story, because of the surreal elements of it. Our protagonist, "Stag", is a divorced, forty-something year old man who meets a younger woman, has sex with her, and ends up going as her plus one to a divorce party (like a wedding, but the opposite). Said younger woman also just so happens to have been dumped by her boyfriend. There's a pet turtle named Greely who is mostly the star of the show. There's a strange vibe to the story that is at first a bit endearing (in some ways) but ends up being just odd by the end.

To start with, Russell has lovely prose and there's nothing wrong with it here. That said, there’s a certain comedy to the way Russell writes. No kidding, but I find Russell to be deeply funny at times. Also, of course, a handful of chuckles or smirks from me. That said, I found the protagonist to be deeply unlikable and gross. Was that the intention? I’m not exactly sure. All I know is that thematically, it feel so much weaker than all the other stories I’ve read in this collection especially when compared to them, and the grossness of the protagonist definitely didn’t help any.

[Beth Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I own nearly every book Karen Russell has written and I've read none of them. This makes me a very bad reader indeed. I have been missing out, if this is any indication.

This little novella is outstanding. In the midst of a very self-centered lavish gathering to celebrate a divorce, one man faces his personal demons, his past, his lonely future and comes out better for it with the help of a walk in the desert and a very special land tortoise.

I cried.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story wasn't necessarily bad, but I didn't really care about it. A middle aged white dude feels bad about his life? Groundbreaking.

Rating: 2.5/5

[H.J. Swinford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one really hit me. It was, just as the summary suggests, "darkly funny." But it came around at the end with a gut punch.

[Meg (fairy.bookmother) · Rating 2 out of 5]

dude idc about middle aged divorced men

[Vivienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I hated to mention it. So much planning goes into a formal event. But the fact of the matter was, a desert tortoise was motoring around under all of the tables, trailing a black lace table runner. It was hypnotic to witness its scaly knees bending and straightening, its plated shell slipping through the golden light. It felt like watching a migrating baby mountain.”

Stag’ by Karen Russell is Book 4 in Amazon’s Trespass Collection, that focuses on encounters between humans and animals. Each title is accompanied by a free audiobook. I am slowly working my way through these titles.

I find that the cover art on this collection very appealing. Here the focus is upon a divorce ceremony being held at the Great Mojave, a ‘spendy’ location for such events. The story’s narrator is the plus-one of a young woman that he had just met the previous night. Unfamiliar with any of the participants and guests, he wanders about observing and interacting with various people as the day plays out.

The tortoise noted above is named Greeley, a rescue adopted by Matt to demonstrate that he was ‘tortoise-committed’ to Nia. Greeley had served as the ring bearer at their wedding and was now doing similar at their divorce.

It was a strange little story and as a big fan of tortoises I enjoyed Greeley’s antics. I was not familiar with Karen Russell before reading ‘Stag’ though am now interested in looking at her writing especially her debut novel, ‘Swamplandia’.

[Netanella · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lonely white guy befriends a tortoise at a divorce party in the desert which he attends as a last minute plus-one. The story is darkly comic, as it should be with such a plot line. It's made more so by the reveal of the main character's sad backstory and the reason for his own divorce years ago.

Karen Russell is the only author in the "Trespass" collection of shorts whose works I'm not familiar with. I will need to rectify that lack, as I enjoyed this story.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I keep trying to get into reading Russell and for whatever reason, she doesn't do it for me. It's not Russell; its me.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfocused.

[Tanja · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this went over my head.

[Jessie (Zombie_likes_cake) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not a digital reader at all, physical books all the way. Only in rare situations I opt for the kindle book, usually for the convenience of having something on my phone on the go. But when I saw advertisement for this new amazon Trespass collection (I know, how pathetic: drawn in by an add!) and realized that it includes some of my absolute favorite writers of the moment (and of all time) I knew I had to incorporate them into my reading, and it didn't hurt that I could download them for free at the time. They describe this series as "a collection of wild stories about animal instincts, human folly, and survival from award-winning, bestselling authors" and that sounds pretty good to me, too. Shooting for one story a month but we will see, so far so good.

Karen Russell and especially her short fiction is some of my most beloved fiction ever. I have read everything she has published to date and will pick up any new publication of hers, she is in my top ten of authors if I were to make such a list (and please don't ask me to make that list because maybe it would be more than 10?). Thing is in her story collections I have read pieces before that I didn't love, I guess that is the plight with short stories. Particularly "Vampires in the Lemon Grove" had a few that weren't my cup of tea, however and just for the record, that collection also contains my absolute favorite story by her, "Reeling for the Empire", if you want a sample check that one out.
But to get to the point, "Stag" didn't really do it for me. I don't think its elements come together well, additionally I feel like the tone is not what I hope for when I pick up Russell. I mean there is this divorce party and the commentary on the culture surrounding it, our main character crashing it with the date he met last night and for a while it reads just like this mid-life crisis dude story. And as if Russell realizes that something is missing she suddenly enters the turtle and the flower girl and tries to swing it into a piece of mild magical realism after all but for me it didn't come into something. Especially the flower girl and what she represents reads like this afterthought to make the tale more meaningful and the turtle seems to be from this completely different story. A lot of what was said in earlier pages about the party and the MC's new girlfriend also seems to be of no consequence considering how the story ends. It remains this story about this dude, just now he had some trauma in the past that he can't get over. I dunno, good chance this went over my head, as much as I love Russell: that has happened before to me.

Obviously, I was excited to read this and Russell's flow makes reading something that doesn't work for me still better than many other writers weaker pieces. But yeah, to me this was a weak one.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just haven't been really impressed with the "Amazon short story" collections I've been reading. I think a lot of them may just be over my head...or something. In this one we follow a man at a divorce party (?) who is there with a woman he just met and he knows no one at the party. There's also a pet tortoise wandering around the party. Then we get a horrible revelation from his past that's just sort of throw in. I will say the writing itself is exemplary, but I just didn't get this one.

[Teleseparatist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russell's narration is simply wonderful - the simple story flows, the images are indelible, the mood oppressive and yet the story - unputdownable. I need to give the author another try because I really enjoyed reading her again.

[Luba · Rating 1 out of 5]

not the 2 seiten lange "wir waren zwar verheiratet, aber ich aLs mAnN habe sie nie besessen" 💀💀


die gesamte geschichte war voller pseudo-philosophischer hot takes, die nicht wirklich philosophisch waren, sondern einfach nur langweilige meinungen von einer frau mitte 30/ anfang 40

[GҽɱɱαSM · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.9*
Quarta història de la col·lecció de relats Trespass. Una bona història, trista, vívida i misteriosa, un protagonista amb una moral gris, un estudi molt interessant de la naturalesa humana, un final rodó.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, my favorite in the series. It's not as weird as the rest of this collection. Entertaining.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved Greeley. Story felt like it wasn't sure what it wanted to be.