I am always reminded how much I actually love short fiction, and continue to wonder why I actually don’t read more. The collection of stories in Orange World is delightful, bringing just a twist of magic, surrealism, and unexpected perspective to the ordinary and mundane: a greyhound’s perspective of Madame Bovary, a lesser demon preying on the vulnerability of new motherhood, a teenager’s first love with a 200 year old bog girl. My standout favorite is “The Tornado Auction,” where the story of a tornado farmer, unable to compete with those big weather farms, goes for one last prize twister, is really a story about grief, loss, and connection. It is a beautiful, masterful story in a beautiful, masterful collection.

The most fun I've had reading a short story collection in some time, Orange's stories take unexpected turns that stuck with me long after reading.

Karen Russell is one of those rare writers who shines at both the novel form and the short story form. This is not an easy feat because of how one form requires a certain expansiveness while the other requires a certain economy. A good number of these stories have been published in other places before being collected in this book. But the book is definitely worth its cost several times over. These are stories that dazzle technically, stun emotionally, and enlighten intellectually. If the book is a reader's first introduction to Russell, it will certainly make them want to go read all the rest of her works.

This is my second favorite Karen Russell (I will always hold St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves as one of my favorite books.) Top stories include The Bad Graft, Bog Girl: A Romance, and The Gondoliers. All of these have some kind of conflict between humans and the natural world, from infiltrating cacti to corpses to a Florida covered in toxic water.

Strange and enticing stories that fell somewhere between The Overstory and Annihilation. Each story blossomed in its own to reveal the rules of its particular world. I am going to have to go back and read Swamplandia.

I have been a fan of Karen Russell since her first book, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (one of my all time favorite books). I was so excited to see that she was coming out with a new book of short stories and Orange World definitely lived up to my expectations. Russell has grown as a short story writer and here balances the weird and fantastical with insightful social commentary and moving characters. She really uses the short story format to its full potential, creating scenarios that might not be sustainable in novel format, but are extremely intriguing through the shorter glimpse of a short story. I never felt the stories were too long or too short and each was perfectly paced. I highly recommend this collection for any fans of short stories, fantasy, or magical realism.

I received an ARC of this collection from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Excellent collection of stories. I enjoyed the book.

This is a collection of short stories to be savored. After reading Swamplandia I expected fine writing, but my expectations were exceeded. Karen Russell 's style is elegant, lyrical, and accessible, with memorable turns of phrase. The stories may seem bizarre, but the plots move along and capture our attention, and although the characters and their situations may be incredible and even distasteful, at the same time we believe in them and care.

I was so excited for this title because I LOVED Swamplandia and really enjoyed Vampires in the Lemon Grove. But I was unfortunately disappointed. I only really enjoyed one of these stories - Bog Girl. That story was fantastic. The other stories were either boring or too strange for me. I enjoy magical realism, but a little bit goes a long way, and this story collection was too much. The writing was good, and some of her ideas were wonderful - just not my taste.

Karen Russell's writing creates incredibly vivid worlds. The stories have elements of unreality, but still evoke very real situations. There are themes of female solidarity and experience throughout. Overall, an incredibly strong collection of stories and one I will be recommending.

Though short stories are not my thing, I did enjoy several of these tales. They are imaginative and thought provoking, ranging from zombies to devils to sentient Joshua trees to farming tornados. Quite an imagination!

Thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC to read and review.

The strange magic-realism I've come to expect from Karen Russell is in full force in this collection of short stories. The thing I love most about this book is the juxtaposition between the writing style and the subject matter. Her writing is always dreamy and romantic, as though she is writing about a dazzling royal ball. But the subject matter is often grotesque to the extreme: a room full of men who have been dead for years, a smitten teen carrying around a decomposing body everywhere he goes, a woman whose body has been commandeered by the spirit of a tree, a dog who runs away and breaks her own leg.

As with Vampires in the Lemon Grove, there are bright images in this book that have stayed with me, and randomly pop into my imagination. I love that about Russell. She knows how to stick with you.

I was excited to read this author's new work, but honestly, her stuff always makes me uncomfortable. It makes me worry about her. I assume this on-edge feeling is why people read horror. If that's what you're looking for, there is no one finer.

These stories are delightfully bonkers. They've got all the folksiness and tall tales aspects of Mark Twain's stories with Gabriel Garcia Lorca's magical realism. For the most part, they work, once you come to understand the outlandish premise for each one. When they don't work, though, it feels like heavy going. Through bizarre scenarios, Russell makes you think about elements of human nature, like in "Black Corfu," where rumors about a character are externalized as though the real person has been destroyed. To my mind, the strongest stories were The Prospectors, the Bad Graft, Bog Girl, Black Corfu, and Orange World.

I really like Karen Russell's writing and was delighted to hear that she has another collection coming out soon. She conjures fantastic monsters and places them within worlds of semi-reality to see how things can turn out.
In this collection, a couple of girls go to a fancy party at the top of the mountain to find out that they went to a very different party than the one they had anticipated, a couple's trip to Joshua Tree National Park gets weird when the spirit of one of the trees possesses the woman, a young boy makes an ancient bog girl his girlfriend, and a nervous mother breast feeds a devil in order to ward off harm to her new baby.
I have seen this collection categorized as horror, but magical realism with its lush prose and odd views of reality seems more appropriate. I will read anything Karen Russell publishes.

Karen Russell is a master short story writer, and Orange World really shows her at the top of her game. Each story, whether it's a boy falling in love with a 2000-year-old mummy (Bog Girl: a romance) or a man obsessed with growing tornadoes (The Tornado Auction), each story is beautifully crafted with just the right amount of
strangeness and wonder. For fans of Kevin Wilson and Joshua Ferris.

I adored Russell’s first collection of short stories “St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories,” but none of her subsequent works have been able to recapture that magic for me.

I love her imaginative style and I tend to enjoy magical realism, but for me the stories are all just falling flat. Of the first four stories in this book, I liked the first one the best, it seemed to have the most tension throughout and I wanted the characters to make it to safety. The following three I found to be based on interesting ideas, but to never really go anywhere. They all seem to be trying to explore some kind of idea about relationships and personal autonomy within relationships, but they never really reach beyond atmosphere and scene setting to actually say anything.

I don’t think I’ll be finishing this book, the stories just aren’t capturing me enough for me to slog through the remaining five.


#OrangeWorldAndOtherStories #NetGalley