Upbeat?

I don't understand the Publishers Weekly review on Amazon.com use of "upbeat" to describe Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. I'd say not one of those ten stories was upbeat. Interesting reading, but definitely not the sort of thing that makes you smile and say, "Gee, isn't life grand?" More the sort of thing that leaves you thankful you're not the characters. Even though some of the settings were kind of neat.

I also do not understand SciFi's use of Teyla doing random things to promote SGA. Mostly it makes me go, "What?" But I don't understand their promotional decisions anyway.