“Orange World and Other Stories,” by Karen Russell
(2019, 271 pages, Genre: Short Stories)
Karen Russell’s imaginative stories in this collection grabbed me from the first page and kept me entranced to the end. In eight fantastical stories, you will find ghosts, possession by a plant spirit, a drowned Florida, Madame Bovary’s greyhound, a boy in love with a perfectly preserved bog body, a woman who believes she must nurse the devil to keep her own child alive, a doctor whose task is to ensure that the dead stay that way, and tornado ranchers. Yes, these people buy, sell, and raise tornadoes to full strength.
From the peat bogs of Ireland to Joshua Tree National Park in California, from Oregon to the remains of Miami, from provincial France to the Nebraska plains, to an island in the Mediterranean, ordinary people struggle with supernatural events and beings.
Most of the protagonists are relatable or may feel like someone you’ve known. You can see how they got into these terrible situations, but how will they ever get out of them?
Russell’s writing draws you in and makes you care about the outcomes in each and every story. It’s not easy to fit such complete adventures in the short story form, but she rises to the challenge admirably. It is fascinating to explore these disparate worlds and meet all these characters.
I’m delighted to find that she has several more story collections as well as a novel so that I can continue to meet new characters and new worlds for some time.
Visit Concord Public Library at http://www.concordpubliclibrary.net.
— Julia Miller
