RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksRussell...grounds the supernatural in a firmly real, at times even mundane, world. In Orange World and Other Stories, actual demons and ghosts externalize, yet do not replace, the inner ones we know so well ... All of the stories in Orange World open with a crisp swiftness that feels like in medias res on steroids. This will lull you into believing you’re reading about ordinary worlds. Only then will Russell deliver, sometimes building gradually and sometimes via an abrupt slap, the often hilarious and always absurd truth ... Russell’s writing is at times overly lush, like the rich landscapes she describes. But even at its most profligate, her ability to give weird and creepy shape to what might otherwise remain dark corners of the human psyche is refreshing. Orange World and Other Stories is a collection hovering on the threshold between horror and comedy, between the phantasmagoric and the fleshly. Its duplicity echoes the duplicity with which society often treats mothers ... To read Orange World and Other Stories feels like witnessing someone capture what a lot of us are afraid to contemplate in the dark, so we only look at it head-on as it fades into nonsense with the light of day.
