Sleep Donation
“[Written] with Twilight Zone-like inventiveness and the energy and brio of a natural fantasist with a proclivity for blending the real and surreal, the psychological and the sci-fi. . . . [Russell] creates a fully imagined world with its own rituals and rules, and deftly satirizes the media and governmental responses to the plague of sleeplessness. . . . Another testament to her fertile powers of invention.”
–Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review
Orange World
“Amidst the leading pack of talents Karen Russell writes the most like she’s on fire, as in: this close to revelations. Orange World is her best collection yet. Her imagination’s baroque syntax has been planed down to the absolute essentials, allowing the power of her vision to speak for itself…This is prophetic work written with clarifying fury.”
–John Freeman, Lit Hub
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
“From apparent influences as disparate as George Saunders, Saki, Stephen King, Carson McCullers and Joy Williams, [Russell] has fashioned a quirky, textured voice that is thoroughly her own: lyrical and funny, fantastical and meditative.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“One of the great American writers of our young century.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
Swamplandia!
“Absolutely irresistible. . . . A suspenseful, deeply haunted book. . . . A marvel.”
—The New York Times
“[Russell] has thrown the whole circus of her heart onto the page, safety nets be damned. . . . Russell has deep and true talent.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
“Already a master of tone and texture and an authority on the bizarre, Karen Russell writes with great flair and fearlessness. . . . The way Russell beds mundane detail in surrealist settings makes her work exceptionally evocative. . . . Russell’s astonishing gifts augur well for a novel of maturity and complexity. It’s only a matter of time.”
—CARLO WOLFF, Denver Post