The Orange Eats Creeps [Paperback]

Grace Krilanovich (Author), Steve Erickson (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2010

* National Book Foundation's '5 Under 35' Selection.
* NPR Best Books of 2010: A Hidden Gem.
* The Believer Book Award Finalist.

"The exhilaration of such a novel is nearly beyond calculation. If a new literature is at hand then it might as well begin here."
—Steve Erickson, from his Introduction

"The book feels written in a fever; it is breathless, scary and like nothing I've ever read before. Krilanovich's work will make you believe that new ways of storytelling are still emerging from the margins."
—NPR.org

"Grace Krilanovich’s first book is a steamy cesspool of language that stews psychoneurosis and viscera into a horrific new organism — the sort of muck in which Burroughs, Bataille, and Kathy Acker loved to writhe."
—The Believer

It's the '90s Pacific Northwest refracted through a dark mirror, where meth and madness hash it out in the woods. . . . A band of hobo vampire junkies roam the blighted landscape—trashing supermarket breakrooms, praying to the altar of Poison Idea and GG Allin at basement rock shows, crashing senior center pancake breakfasts—locked in the thrall of Robitussin trips and their own wild dreams.

A girl with drug-induced ESP and an eerie connection to Patty Reed (a young member of the Donner Party who credited her survival to her relationship with a hidden wooden doll), searches for her disappeared foster sister along "The Highway That Eats People," stalked by a conflation of Twin Peaks' "Bob" and the Green River Killer, known as Dactyl.

With a scathing voice and penetrating delivery, Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps is one of the most ferocious debut novels in memory.

Grace Krilanovich has been a MacDowell colony fellow and a finalist for the Starcherone Prize.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Grace Krilanovich's first book is a steamy cesspool of language that stews psychoneurosis and viscera into a horrific new organism—the sort of muck in which Burroughs, Bataille, and Kathy Acker loved to writhe."—The Believer

"Krilanovich's work will make you believe that new ways of storytelling are still emerging from the margins."—NPR.org

"One of 2010's small-press triumphs."—The Week

"The Orange Eats Creeps contains the hallucinatory, disjointed, plotless, yet bizarrely charming ravings of a young refugee from foster care who now belongs to a pack of teenage hobo vampires that rove convenience stores and supermarkets high on Robitussin and mop buckets of coffee."—Newsday

About the Author

Grace Krilanovich (Author): Grace Krilanovich is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts, where she received her MFA. She has been a finalist for the Starcherone Prize, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, published in Black Clock, and a fellow of the MacDowell Colony. The Orange Eats Creeps is her first novel.

Steve Erickson (Introduction): Steve Erickson is the author of eight novels: Days Between Stations (1985), Rubicon Beach (1986), Tours of the Black Clock (1989), Arc d'X (1993), Amnesiascope (1996), The Sea Came in at Midnight (1999), Our Ecstatic Days (2005) and Zeroville (2007).

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Two Dollar Radio; First Edition edition (September 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0982015186
• ISBN-13: 978-0982015186
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 6.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #104,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 47 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Transgressive & Experimental October 25, 2010

By George LaCas

Format:Paperback

This is the kind of book I'd like to see more of, and if such books are already out there I need to look harder for them. Congrats to Ms. Krilanovich for having the sheer audacity to not only write this novel but to see it through to publication.

I am not a member of the vast majority whose knee-jerk reaction is to condemn or dismiss a new work if it does not easily fit into one of the predefined genres that the marketplace has seen fit to carve out for us. In fact, I think you ought to get extra points for writing a novel that isn't easily categorized (and I say this as both a reader and a novelist). THE ORANGE EATS CREEPS has elements of transgressive fiction, experimental, YA horror, gothic horror, quasi-cautionary druggie fiction, etc...yet isn't classifiable, in my opinion.

Did it shock me? Yes, but not because of sex, drugs or violence (which this novel does supply, not graphically but rather with skewed offhandedness and sometimes poetic euphemism). What shocked me was a thought I had while reading: Is this what life/consciousness is really like for some of Portland's street kids? And, how is it possible for anyone to actually survive with such an altered mind? The novel was most effective for me when it convinced me that, in fact, life is really like this for some of us.

But how can that be? THE ORANGE EATS CREEPS strays into territory so strange - notably the hallucinatory interior voice of its narrator - that it seems, most of the time, completely separate from any actual reality. And yet not. Sometimes it seems disturbingly real.

I'm not giving it five stars because, although it is on the whole very well written, its storyline (the narrator's quest) did not always survive the opaqueness of the narrator's interior voice, which often seemed built out of chunks of dream imagery that, for me, proved impenetrable. But like any reader I have my own limitations and preconceptions.

I think this book deserves to be studied at the university level, and I can foresee an underground following. Let's hope Ms. Krilanovich keeps writing. She's the real deal.

44 of 58 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not recommended for those under twenty-five or over twenty-four. October 9, 2010

By Dick Johnson TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

(First - why four stars? Krilanovich's story was consistent from page one to page last. I did read every page without throwing it into the trash. And, any other reason scares me more than I'm willing to admit. Or - why not?)

This book is not (I really, really hope) going to find its way to a book rack in your local supermarket. Grandma doesn't need to pick this up to see what it's about. Coronary sufferers are so tragic (plus they block the aisles).

We follow the main character as she lives or dies or trips or whatever it is she is doing as she tries to find her foster sister for some unknown reason through a convoluted series of journeys. She is unbelievably messed up on every page of the book.

The remaining people(?) include members of a blood-eating group who are into all the usual anti-social behaviors of such. This cast of characters is a compilation of everyone you do not want your children or other family members, friends, strangers, or even enemies to meet. You won't be too sure you want to meet them even within the covers of the book.

I'm assuming the only people who made it to these reviews are the ones who did not read the Product Description/Look Inside features above. Given what I've written, you have to be wondering why I kept reading the book. I wondered the same thing many times. Many, many, many ....

This entry into some hopefully unlabeled sub-genre of some other unlabeled sub-genre, is actually well written. Krilanovich is well aware of the rules she is breaking - and only someone with that knowledge should be allowed by publishers to get by with it. And, I really, really hope that not one line in the book is even close to being autobiographical.

She has written this in what perhaps is best called stream of consciousness or whatever passes for consciousness in the narrator. Extreme promiscuity, drugs, filth, degradation, plus some nasty stuff take up the text. The entire text. Every page of the book. Every paragraph of every page. Every ... well, you get it.

I bought this based on the recommendations of Jeff VanderMeer and Steve Erickson. I may not do that in the future. I have no idea what meaning, if any, there is to be taken from the book. If there is symbolism, I will leave the job of analysis to those smarter and/or sicker than me. Of course, this may only be an eternally bad trip being described.

Bottom line - ninety-five percent of book readers would absolutely, completely detest this book (that will serve as a recommendation to others). The other five percent, each needing serious therapy, will form some opinion of this book. Over half will be lying. I am in one of those categories.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars scatterbrained March 5, 2012

By R. Caviness

Format:Paperback

I was excited to read this book. I enjoyed the experimental nature of the writing for about the first fifty pages. After that, it's complete lack of cohesiveness became tedious, and I quit at page 80. If it were a shorter story, it could have been great. But to try to make a novel out of sentences that don't follow each other just doesn't make it. I like Burroughs and Beckett and other writers in that vein, but this is not of that caliber.