Description: This book presents eight of the author's short stories. In "Bog Girl: A Romance," a 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 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, the author captures the tenderness of ordinary life.--adapted from book jacket.
Review Quotes: "Russell is one of the most original American authors working today. She's also one of the best. Orange World is a thing of beauty, a stunning collection from one of the most brilliant literary minds of her generation."
--Michael Schaub, NPR
--The Wall Street Journal
"Orange World makes me want to shout with joy. Russell's ease with her material, her sheer glee on the page, shines through in each piece. . . . Delicious."
--Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post
"Russell's language rockets off the page. . . . One of our most entrancing storytellers."
--Vogue "A rare combination of literary brilliance and unbridled entertainment."
--Mark Haddon "Is there a colorist in American fiction with the same vivid talents as Karen Russell? . . . Her descriptions are 21st century Dickensian genius."
--The Boston Globe
"Russell creates fully realized worlds. Her writing is particular and alive. Her imagination spills over the sink and hits the backsplash."
--The New York Times
"Russell's particular gift lies in taking themes that are close to universal and presenting them in stories whose strangeness comes to seem entirely natural, even necessary."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Marvelous. . . . Startlingly inventive stories which confirm Russell's status as master of the slipstream."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"Astonishing. . . . Russell seems the most natural storyteller alive, so completely does she give herself to premises that might undo a lesser writer."
--New York Review of Books
"A stunning collection. . . . It'll get under your skin in the best possible way."
--Good Housekeeping
"[A] brilliantly inventive . . . wonderful new collection of short stories. . . . Russell grounds each story in human experience, both poignant and hilarious in turn. . . . Underlying all of this is the exquisite beauty of Russell's sentences, which will repeatedly surprise readers with their imagery and masterful language."
--BookPage (starred review) "Eight crisp stories that will leave longtime fans hungry for more. . . . A momentous feat of storytelling in an already illustrious career."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Virtuoso Russell, gifted with acute insights, compassion, and a daring, free-diving imagination, explores the bewitching and bewildering dynamic between 'the voracious appetite of nature and its yawning indifference' and humankind's relentless profligacy and obliviousness."
--Booklist (starred review) "Orange World is [Russell's] best collection yet. Her imagination's baroque syntax has been planed down to the absolute essentials, allowing the power of her vision to speak for itself. . . . This is prophetic work written with clarifying fury."
--Lit Hub