Karen Russell ORANGE WORLD is a collection of short stories that are outside the realm of reality that really draw you in and get under your skin. Call her genre horror if you will sci-fi. Still, you will become immersed into the surreal and sublime world created by this award winning writing. Russell's ORANGE WORLD won the National Magazine Award for Fiction ('19). Her debut novel "Swamplandia" ('12) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Russell is a writer extraordinaire unafraid to chart new territories, merging the imaginary with reality, the magical & formidable as well as beauty amidst horror. The 8 short stories are all eerie & exciting in their own shimmery & scintillating way. They share a common ephemeral thread that lures the reader into a mounting sense of dread. The stories cross over into a realm that unities the living with the dead. Russell skillfully endows the inanimate with sentient conscious. In "The Gondoliers" Russell a not too distant or dis believable apocalyptic future manifests a mystical allure. "I didn't know who I was, what I was. The face floating on the water was not mine, not yet. The silence that let me ripple out of my body, until at last I felt entirely at peace, whole and unfractured. One with the wildest turnings of the universe." An ominous foreboding of death morphs into feelings of serenity and a continuity to life. Russell demonstrates a desire to sync opposing forces into one. In "Madame Bovary's Greyhound" Russell writes "Moods blew from one mind to the other, delight and melancholy." ORANGE WORLD is a marvel to read. It has the mesmerizing quality to spiral into your heart and reorganize your perceptions into something new & astounding.
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