It’s official: Karen Russell is now one of my favorite authors. Her collection of strange yet visceral tales in Orange World stuck with me after I closed the book and far beyond that. Part of the reason that her stories stick in the mind could be attributed to 1) the strangeness of the tales (for example, a couple of young con artist women find themselves in a lodge full of ghosts), and 2) the theme and color that tie all these stories together.
Many of the stories in Orange World center around the feeling of moving into a different and frightening stage of life, a type of moving on that can be bittersweet—or just plain bitter—or just plain sweet. In “Madame Bovary’s Greyhound,” Emma’s dog falls out of love with her master (the tale takes advantage of a dog’s reputation of an endless bounty of love, affection, and loyalty, turning this assumption about dogs on its head in a strangely unsettling way). In “Tornado Auction,” Bobby, an older man, buys what he perceives to be a weak tornado to try and prove to himself that he still has what it takes to raise it (perhaps a stand-in for raising his three daughters, who he feels he has failed). In “Orange World,” a new mother is terrified of losing her child, so she makes a deal with a devil.
This final, titular story introduces the idea of the Orange World as a danger zone; the danger lies in perceived safety, where something terrible could happen because you aren’t expecting it to happen: a false sense of security. Many of the characters in these stories live in their own versions of the Orange World. This connection is easier to see when one notices Russell’s careful use of color: the stories, every one of them, are peppered with reds, browns, and, of course, oranges. The brown-green world of the post-apocalyptic swamp in “The Gondoliers” cries danger, especially when the main character, Janelle, finds a dead spot where she can’t be heard and can’t hear anyone else. This place of relief and freedom for Janelle quickly turns into a place of fear.
In “The Tornado Auction,” when Bobby loses control of his growing tornado, the colors become more vivid.
Sucking surface air, she tore a black furrow through the pasture, and within seconds of hitting the atmosphere her pearly color began to mutate as she absorbed the stain of whatever tumbled through her—now she was woodsmoke, now pollen, now gravel, now red dirt.
(Russell, 142–43)
This use of color, the orange/red/brown threaded throughout the stories, creates a sense of something whole. These colors often surface in moments of danger, such as the Bog Girl’s appearance in “Bog Girl: A Romance,” and the color of the plants in “The Bad Graft” just moments before a woman is infected with a plant’s consciousness. This idea that danger, that the Orange World, is a place where all these characters and stories exist, is a cohesive yet startling notion; we, ourselves, also exist in the Orange World, a place where danger lurks in the most unlikely of places.
And yet, to my surprise, Russell finishes the collection of startling tales, some tragic and some bittersweet, with a positive beat—one that grips the reader in a startlingly touching moment between the main character of “Orange World,” Rae, and her mother, who has been mentioned only a couple of times so far in the story. After going through a harrowing experience getting rid of the devil that was feeding off her, Rae comes to a realization: the deep-seated fear that she feels for her newborn child, the terror that comes with this constant lurking danger to the most precious thing in the world to her, is a common occurrence amongst mothers. This knowledge, that Rae is not alone in her fear, gives her the strength to keep working at being a good mother.
A feeling leaps into her from the past: ‘Mother! You felt this way about me!’ ‘Yes,’ her mother says. ‘And I feel that way about you still.’ Green World. Rae is learning to identify it very late in this life. Her feet push into the floorboards. Happiness travels through her, heels to skull. She cradles her son. She cradles the phone. Remotely, her mother is cradling her.”
(Russell, 266)
This end to the story, and to the collection, creates a connection between Rae and her mother, as well as a connection between this story and all the others. In turn, Russell challenges the readers to seek their own connections, to not fear the Orange World. Instead, she encourages readers to move through the Orange World, conscious of the danger but always searching for connection.
Using threads of color, theme, and connections, Russell creates an experience that sticks in the mind and in the heart. If you’re looking for an example of how to create a cohesive short story collection, give this one a read. That is, if you dare to enter the Orange World…
Rachel Sandell 