This is a collection of short stories that really works, unlike the last one I wrote about! I don’t want to include a summary of each story, but I do want to mention my favorites: I have not stopped thinking about The Gondoliers or Orange World since putting this book down two weeks ago. In The Gondoliers, 4 sisters use echolocation (!) to navigate the waters in a presumably post-climate change world. Incredible world building, amazing character study, just all around wonderful and weird. In Orange World, a young mother strikes a deal with the devil to protect her baby; and then finds a support group of mothers who have done the same. Really, really great (and also…am I that mother?). Black Corfu and the Tornado Auction were also great. Actually they are all great!
All of the stories involve some interesting twist on the relationship between man and the natural world. It’s not necessarily horrific (well, the devil in Orange World is pretty horrible) but factual: in Black Corfu, it’s just a fact that some surgeons operate on the dead. In The Prospectors, it’s just a fact that our plucky heroines get stuck with zombies (?!) in an abandoned ski chalet. Russell’s fiction is deeply creative; unusual circumstances where humans are shown to be truly human, with doubts and love and tensions of community. Although they weren’t all optimistic stories, I finished the book with a feeling of buoyancy, partly from the picture of humanity that she paints, and partly because the stories were so full of imagination.
5/5, I highly recommend this one. I went in blind, and of all the books I’ve read this year this was so far the most pleasant surprise!