This month's Book of the Month is Love Orange by Natasha Randall (JR 1991-93).

About the Book

While Hank struggles with his lack of professional success, his wife Jenny, feeling stuck and beset by an urge to do good, becomes ensnared in a dangerous correspondence with a prison inmate called John. Letter by letter, John pinches Jenny awake from the "marshmallow numbness" of her life. The children, meanwhile, unwittingly disturb the foundations of their home life with forays into the dark net and strange geological experiments.

Love Orange throws open the blinds of American life, showing a family facing up to the modern age, from the ascendancy of technology, the predicaments of masculinity, the pathologising of children, the epidemic of opioid addiction and the tyranny of the WhatsApp Gods. The first novel by the acclaimed translator is a comic cocktail, an exuberant skewering of contemporary anxieties and prejudices.

Recommended for

• Fans of the contemporary genre
• Science Fiction lovers                                                                             

About the OKS Author

Natasha Randall attended King’s in Jervis House from 1991 to 1993. Since leaving King’s, Natasha has become a writer and literary translator. Her work has been featured in the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Moscow Times, BookForum, The New York Times, Strad magazine, HALI magazine and on National Public Radio (USA).

In 2024, Natasha kindly delivered a creative writing workshop to the Morpurgo Society at King's called 'Welcoming the Reader.'

Love Orange was published in 2020 and is available to purchase from Amazon.