On "Oranges" by Anthony Doerr (2032 words) ****

Reading some people's writing seems so effortless that it's hard to believe that hours of craftsmanship went into the final product. Doerr's tale "Oranges" is one of those. Ostensibly a love story about two people who meet on the plane, the tale sets one perfect word after another. Oranges, as one might imagine, play a large role, a kind of motif running throughout--their juice, their smell, their skin, their core--but most off the one in which a gifted person peels them whole, making of them a single string, like history--sets of events--rolling around and around and around to make finally a whole. Read the story here at rkvry.