Karen Russell’s Orange World is a peek into the mind of one of our age’s most gifted writers as she translates ideations into daydreams, intimate conversations into fairy tales.
The short-story collection is a fitting return for Russell, following her masterful, Pulitzer-finalist novel Swamplandia!, a journey of self-discovery reflecting upon her family’s move from Miami to Portland, Ore., and her desire to broaden her literary reach outside her native Florida. Across its eight stories, Russell takes us into the future and explores the past, from the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, across Tornado Alley, and deep into the swamps of a post-apocalyptic “Old Florida.”
Orange World continues Russell’s exploration and love of magical realism. During a talk in New York, Russell discussed her schematic for story creation. As an example, she noted that her inspiration for her story “The Tornado Auction” came from meeting an older tomato farmer in the Midwest. From this mundane interaction, she extrapolated something truer to theme: What if the man at the local market were selling tornadoes instead of tomatoes?
Other stories flourish with similar magical delight. One follows the thoughts of a greyhound; another tracks a doctor who fails in his duties to cut the hamstrings of the town’s dead, lest they rise from the dead. “The Gondoliers,” one of the collection’s strongest stories, tells of sisters who possess bat-like echolocation abilities in a Florida mutated by climate change. Each story takes a unique, fantastical turn that leaves readers eager for resolution.
Beyond thematic structure, it’s Russell’s word wizardry that has readers devouring her books and stories. Tornadoes’ destruction is like “mobile homes conscripted into a cosmic game of kick the can.” Stars, she spells, are “tiny white spades … tossing huge quantities of darkness around.” Wading through crowds becomes a “festival of elbows”; Joshua trees, “Satan’s telephone poles.”
Russell’s personal learning journey is also reflected in Orange World. Pairing her gorgeous imagery with historical context and factual musings, it’s less something she tells you about than a trip she brings you along on, as if you’re standing with Russell in a state park, together reading little infographics about the wildlife.
In Ghostly Matters, Avery Gordon writes, “We need to know where we live in order to imagine living elsewhere.” Having conquered Florida in Swamplandia!, a coming-of-age story for a young girl and boy, Russell has chosen a variety of locations, settings, and eras to dissect and comment on. In New York, Russell explained she has “never been able to start a story without a landscape in mind. … People are always features of the landscapes in some ways.” Her landscapes, from the Midwest to Croatia, 500 years ago to decades into the future, are unique in their scope and world-building, but more telling is how Russell navigates them to elucidate relatable, modern themes.
One in particular is Russell’s commentary on women as they relate to men, a theme Orange World shares with Russell’s prior work. Though the outcome and roles are different, both the Bird Man and Ava in Swamplandia! and Janelle, the gondolier, and her customer, an old man, find their pairings on riverboats in treacherous situations in South Florida. These juxtapositions are revealing, as Russell often notes from the perspective of women just how much of women’s energy is spent feeding the egos, desires, insecurities, and loneliness of men. In “The Prospectors,” Russell uses a cotillion-esque book, Make Your Date Feel Like He Is the Life of the Party!, to deliver commentary on how her female characters, savvy thieves, have to be “very amenable. … We needed to believe in their rooms until dawn — just long enough to escape them.” Says the father in “The Tornado Auction,” “I wanted the girls, unlike my tornadoes, to travel anywhere they chose without causing a stir.”
The premise of her title story, “Orange World,” is a devil who feasts on the insecurities of vulnerable women. Russell lists some of the dangers facing modern women, what she calls “red world” situations: “Women in ICE detention centers, separated from their children. Women in Beijing, afraid to breath the toxic air. … She wonders how far the devil goes; there are deals to be made across the globe.” Only when the vulnerable finally realize that by banding together they are stronger are they able to shrink the devil in the light of day, collectively reducing the toxic minion of Satan — toxic man? — into a shapeless nothing. Not particularly subtle, but it’s a comment on a modern world evolving, at least hopefully, for the good when it comes to how men and women interact and work together. Orange World is a set of stories that is a marker along a road we all still travel in this regard.
Orange World is a journey worth taking, setting GPS and road maps aside, thankful that Russell lets us tag along on her masterfully crafted journey.
Tyler Grant is a lawyer in New York, published poet, and Washington Examiner contributor.
