Orange World and Other Stories
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.9
(78)
Karen Russell
From the Pulitzer Finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell’s extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination. Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In“Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors,” two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. In the brilliant, hilarious title story, a new mother desperate to ensure her infant’s safety strikes a diabolical deal, agreeing to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. The landscape in which these stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial space, bracketed by the void—yet within it Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life. Orange World is a miracle of storytelling from a true modern master.
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More Details:
Author
Karen Russell
Pages
288
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published Date
2019-05-14
ISBN
0525656146 9780525656142
Community ReviewsSee all
"This was such a charming book. The stories were certainly strange and I loved em. Makes me want to check out the authors other works"
Patrick Henry Aldrich
""as I leaned against this ghost, I felt my life falling into place" (Russell 25).
In her short story collection "Orange World and Other Stories", Karen Russell expertly employs fantastical elements to draw out the complexities of her characters. She blends the mundane with the mystical, familiarizing her audience with the characters and the setting quite effortlessly, all while pulling them into the depths of the unknown.
Russell makes a unique commentary on the ailments of today’s society by taking one such flaw and expanding a dystopian reality from it. The setting, fantastical elements, and characters all unite to underline this main flaw. Whether it is the unrealistic standards men hold for women, the immediate dangers of climate change, or the inability to accept unconditional love, Russell has a world in which she painfully addresses the problem. It is these realities, addressed in imaginary settings, that make up the titular “Orange World” of Russell’s fiction, breathing an unnatural yet familiar life into the blotches of ink on each page."
Jacob Longini
