Will I love Orange World and Other Stories?

Startling, quick-witted attention to story pervades this collection, but I’m especially entranced with “Bog Girl: A Romance.”

Tell me another story in which a young man named Cillian falls in love with a girl dug out from peat, a teen who is two thousand years old. Karen Russell makes me root for this love affair and believe completely that Cillian rises “with the Bog Girl in his arms, nuzzling her blue neck.”

The haunting lingers as I read the other compelling stories, too, including a story in which a mother makes a pact with the devil.

Any time I see a new story by Russell, I drop everything to step into the funny, quirky, and insightful worlds she creates. When I first read the title story of Orange World, about a woman who has made a bargain with a devil to protect her own baby, I wanted to press this book into the hands of any mother struggling with breastfeeding.

I could think of no better way to explain my experience than Russell’s description of trying to nurse a clawed, fanged, insatiable monster—along with the mix of posturing and solidarity I found within new mom’s… show more.

In Orange World, Karen Russell guides readers expertly through a multitude of weird worlds, but in her hands the weird becomes familiar as we enter her characters’ inner lives.

The title story—about a mother striking a deal with the devil to protect her child, only this deal involves breastfeeding the devil himself—struck a chord with me, as my collection also focuses on motherhood, and I wrote many of the stories while in the throes of taking care of my young child.

Other standouts in Russell’s collection are “Bog Girl,” a love story between an ordinary teenage boy and… show more.