Reading Susan Orlean's 'The Orchid Thief'

Until the day before yesterday I hadn’t read anything written by Susan Orlean. After I opened her book, ‘The Orchid Thief’ I wondered why I hadn’t found her before. She writes in a wonderful style that can be only described as arrestingly simple. Her long sentences flow and I just could not stop reading until I finished about fifty pages in one go. Though I read ‘Outside’ and ‘Esquire’, magazines she writes for, on and off, I haven’t come across any articles by Orlean. Maybe I picked all those issues that didn’t have her pieces. My bad luck.

I had picked up ‘The Orchid Thief’ because a friend was searching for it. I am glad I found it because I have discovered another good writer I am planning to read more of. When my friend wrote about the book I had thought it was a novel but I was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t, and it turned out to be an engrossing book about orchids, orchid collectors and a madcap thief, Laroche, and is based in Florida. Laroche is as unlikely a character I ever encountered.

I haven’t yet finished the book but it is a wonderful read and some of the sentences are so beautifully simple and funny that I am presenting a couple of them here.

‘Just then I got extremely curious but decided to wait until we were out of the swamp and in a secure government vehicle before I asked the giants what they were in prison for.’

‘He reached for a pot that held the cutest plant in the world. I had vowed that I would acquire not even a single orchid on any of my trips down here, but I thought I might die if I couldn’t have this one.’

This is a sample of Susan Orlean’s exquisite writing. I will write more about this wonderful book after I finish reading it.