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The King of Limbo: Stories
In stories that move deftly from the magical to the mundane, the simple to the surreal, The King of Limbo showcases a mature talent that calls to mind such greats as Alice Munro and Andre Dubus. Here are drifters, waitresses, horse trainers, housewives, a Nigerian foreign exchange student, a fisherman's wife, a cat with a cause. Blending magical realism and a pitch-perfect ear for the expressions of the human heart, Adrianne Harun presents a cast of unforgettable characters caught in limbo between their reality and their dreams.
Set in locales as diverse as a fictional town on the Northwest coast and a Connecticut boarding school, these stories chart physical and emotional landscapes with equal precision and grace. Vacationers dawdle in souvenir shops. Locals quietly observe the superstitions of the sea. A woman, overcome by the loss of a child, runs her car into a Victorian house, only to be adopted by the house's elderly residents. A killer on the loose prompts a newlywed couple to employ a mannequin as a decoy for marital bliss.
Again and again Adrianne Harun displays a unique ability to view the world from a dazzling array of perspectives. The King of Limbo confirms the arrival of a writer to watch.
Set in locales as diverse as a fictional town on the Northwest coast and a Connecticut boarding school, these stories chart physical and emotional landscapes with equal precision and grace. Vacationers dawdle in souvenir shops. Locals quietly observe the superstitions of the sea. A woman, overcome by the loss of a child, runs her car into a Victorian house, only to be adopted by the house's elderly residents. A killer on the loose prompts a newlywed couple to employ a mannequin as a decoy for marital bliss.
Again and again Adrianne Harun displays a unique ability to view the world from a dazzling array of perspectives. The King of Limbo confirms the arrival of a writer to watch.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
72 people want to read
About the author
Adrianne Harun
7 books28 followersAdrianne Harun is the author of two short story collections,The King of Limbo, a Washington State Book Award finalist, and Catch, Release, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award. Stories from her collections have been listed as Notable in both Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery Stories. Her first novel, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award, a finalist for both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award and the Washington State Book Award and winner of a Pinckley Prize for Debut Crime Fiction. Her second novel, On the Way to the End of the World, will be published in September 2023.
A long-time resident of Port Townsend, Washington, Adrianne ran a garage, Motorsport, with the legendary Alistair Scovil for many years.
A long-time resident of Port Townsend, Washington, Adrianne ran a garage, Motorsport, with the legendary Alistair Scovil for many years.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 11, 2019
This collection started off promisingly. The opening story, “Lukudi,” sets off a spark (as does one of its characters) that I hoped would burst into a blaze as I read on. It, and the next story, anticipate a reader’s reaction and then trick the reader, something I appreciated. By the fifth story the gleam had sputtered, but a flicker was nurtured back to flame with two strong stories before the end. One of the two, “A Closed Sea,” is a kind of parable, a type of story I don’t usually care for, but I found it beautiful in its details.
The stories are varied in their intent, tone and theme. Harun can make the ordinary seem sinister, and then humorous. Though I found some of the stories ‘ordinary,’ they are competent and the promise of brightness is there. The novel she wrote after this collection, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, glows.
The stories are varied in their intent, tone and theme. Harun can make the ordinary seem sinister, and then humorous. Though I found some of the stories ‘ordinary,’ they are competent and the promise of brightness is there. The novel she wrote after this collection, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, glows.
June 25, 2008
Because I live in the town that serves as a setting for some of these stories, I selected this book primary to learn about the ways an author transforms description into fictional setting, but I quickly began to enjoy the stories for their own sake. It was enjoyable to see local landmarks through the eyes of another resident and I now find certain houses in town I pass every day haunted by the memories of these stories. What makes me recommend the book is that I'm sure the memories of non-residents would be convincingly haunted by a place they have never been.
Someday, I would like to make a map of Port Townsend that annexed the fictional places created here. Adrienne Harun's stories would make a neat transparent overlay that changes the names on the map but keeps the geography pretty much intact, but whole galaxies would have to be annexed to include the landscapes of Frank Herbert or Elizabeth Ann Scarborough--a funny kind of cartography! I wonder if those far-flung universes are at all influenced by the author's setting in the way Harun's book clearly was. I've seen the green and leafy place where Dune was written and it is hard to imagine anything further from the desert planet of Arrakis. I like to imagine Herbert cursing a wet and foggy winter and slipping a fresh sheet of paper into his typewriter with the intention of writing about somewhere as unlike his real setting as possible.
Someday, I would like to make a map of Port Townsend that annexed the fictional places created here. Adrienne Harun's stories would make a neat transparent overlay that changes the names on the map but keeps the geography pretty much intact, but whole galaxies would have to be annexed to include the landscapes of Frank Herbert or Elizabeth Ann Scarborough--a funny kind of cartography! I wonder if those far-flung universes are at all influenced by the author's setting in the way Harun's book clearly was. I've seen the green and leafy place where Dune was written and it is hard to imagine anything further from the desert planet of Arrakis. I like to imagine Herbert cursing a wet and foggy winter and slipping a fresh sheet of paper into his typewriter with the intention of writing about somewhere as unlike his real setting as possible.
July 1, 2023
at one point, i contemplated giving this book three stars—in the end, i just couldn't.
a series of short stories with SAT words inelegantly strung together. reviewers used words like 'enthralling' and 'magical.' they lied.
unfortunately, each story was a total snooze fest. their only redeeming quality was their (short) length.
seemed more like writing exercises/explorations done for someone's MFA. however, i wouldn't even publish them in a literary journal.
a series of short stories with SAT words inelegantly strung together. reviewers used words like 'enthralling' and 'magical.' they lied.
unfortunately, each story was a total snooze fest. their only redeeming quality was their (short) length.
seemed more like writing exercises/explorations done for someone's MFA. however, i wouldn't even publish them in a literary journal.
September 12, 2015
Brilliant. My only complaint about THE KING OF LIMBO is that its contents are finite. Yet, they are not, in the way that music unfurls into plumes of living beings beyond the ring of the notes. Lovely and dark and not at all confined to the printed page, Harun's prose breathes and grows with each page turn.
August 5, 2020
I’m not a visual person but every time I picked up Adrianne Harun’s The King of Limbo and Other Stories, the same image came to me.
I am in a pool of blue-green water sinking down, down, down, but it is a very pleasant experience. I’m not drowning but floating far below the surface, caught in a sea of words.
Which means that I liked the book. More than that, I willingly submerged myself in the book. Each story pulled me out of where I was—and right now, with fears of the pandemic overwhelming everything, escaping reality even for a short time is very welcome—and took me somewhere else.
Each story has its own message, and sometimes you might need to read it several times to be able to follow it deep into the water until you discover the treasure that hides so far beneath the surface. It took me several weeks to read the entire collection—not because the book was so big but because the stories were. I would read one, process it, think about it and reflect on it, and perhaps even read it a second time for those details I might have missed the first time.
Then I’d need to surface from the book, breathe in gulps of reality like air, before returning to the depths of yet another of Harun’s tales. And if the characters and storylines are a bit odd, unreal even, it took just a few moments of reflection to realize that most people are a bit odd and most life experiences have a touch of unreality to them.
It is perhaps our own unwillingness to see the oddness, the unreality of it all because we so desperately want everything to be normal that we choose to be blinded to the abnormality.
Reading The King of Limbo takes a certain amount of effort coupled with a willingness to let Harun take you deep into the stories. But it’s worth the dive into the strange environment she creates, if only to recognize how the strange can suddenly seem so familiar.
I am in a pool of blue-green water sinking down, down, down, but it is a very pleasant experience. I’m not drowning but floating far below the surface, caught in a sea of words.
Which means that I liked the book. More than that, I willingly submerged myself in the book. Each story pulled me out of where I was—and right now, with fears of the pandemic overwhelming everything, escaping reality even for a short time is very welcome—and took me somewhere else.
Each story has its own message, and sometimes you might need to read it several times to be able to follow it deep into the water until you discover the treasure that hides so far beneath the surface. It took me several weeks to read the entire collection—not because the book was so big but because the stories were. I would read one, process it, think about it and reflect on it, and perhaps even read it a second time for those details I might have missed the first time.
Then I’d need to surface from the book, breathe in gulps of reality like air, before returning to the depths of yet another of Harun’s tales. And if the characters and storylines are a bit odd, unreal even, it took just a few moments of reflection to realize that most people are a bit odd and most life experiences have a touch of unreality to them.
It is perhaps our own unwillingness to see the oddness, the unreality of it all because we so desperately want everything to be normal that we choose to be blinded to the abnormality.
Reading The King of Limbo takes a certain amount of effort coupled with a willingness to let Harun take you deep into the stories. But it’s worth the dive into the strange environment she creates, if only to recognize how the strange can suddenly seem so familiar.
March 22, 2014
There are a few really great stories in this book. I can't wait to read more by Harun.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews