{"id":6323,"date":"2016-12-01T06:45:27","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T06:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6323"},"modified":"2016-12-02T12:54:44","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T12:54:44","slug":"light-box-stories-by-k-j-orr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6323","title":{"rendered":"Light Box: Stories by K.J. Orr"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Daunt Books 18 February 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

192pp, paperback, \u00a39.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

These are singular stories, tracking individual experience of alienation or flight across an unusually wide range of locations, from Argentina to Siberia.<\/p>\n

Psychologically as well as geographically, Orr\u2019s characters are out to find something, escape something, work something out.\u00a0 Each story, with its arresting descriptive precision (\u2018gunmetal\u2019 parking bays, \u2018the small golden explosions\u2019 of champagne), presents an encounter, a compromise or a series of small shocks, in the course of which something internal shifts or settles.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Lake Shore Limited\u2019, American rail passengers bump against each other and pull awkwardly away, as do railway carriages.\u00a0 In \u2018Disappearances\u2019, a retired cosmetic surgeon plays the subversive.\u00a0 In \u2018By the Canal\u2019 and \u2018The Island\u2019, violence rears up in holiday settings.\u00a0 In \u2018Still Life\u2019, a father copes with his daughter\u2019s paralysis by reading to her about speed and motion.\u00a0 In \u2018The Human Circadian Pacemaker\u2019, the wife of an astronaut tries to imagine what he sees.<\/p>\n

The final story, \u2018The Ice Cream Song is Strange\u2019, pulls all the themes together in a study of discomfort (which we have seen earlier in, for example, \u2018The Shallows\u2019, where a teenage girl on a crowded beach copes with her period).\u00a0 Here, a middle-aged New Yorker adrift in a Japanese hotel\u00a0 –\u00a0 in flight from relationships, going through the motions with the cocktails, the pool, \u2018all the little bottles\u2019\u00a0 –\u00a0 asks himself, \u2018What do you do when you stop?\u2019<\/p>\n

K.J. Orr is a distinctive new talent.\u00a0 She has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the BBC National Short Story Award, the Bridport Prize and the KWS Hilary Mantel International Short Story Competition.\u00a0 Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines including the Dublin Review<\/em> and the White Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Her publishers suggest that she will appeal to fans of Lorrie Moore, Raymond Carver, Lydia Davis, Lucia Berlin, Edith Pearlman, J.M. Coetzee and A.M. Homes. I would add to these Alice Munro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*A 2016 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

Psychologically as well as geographically, Orr\u2019s characters are out to find something, escape something, work something out. Each story, with its arresting descriptive precision (\u2018gunmetal\u2019 parking bays, \u2018the small golden explosions\u2019 of champagne), presents an encounter, a compromise or a series of small shocks, in the course of which something internal shifts or settles […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6323"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6648,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6323\/revisions\/6648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}