Swamplandia! by Karen Russell 2011

The plot seems unique and the setting is familiar yet intriguing: the mucky Florida Everglades, waters filled with alligators and air fogged with mystery. On the first page we are introduced to the Bigtree Tribe, a white family that lives on the swamp island of Swamplandia! and runs a small adventure park that features alligator wrestlers, swimmers, and a tiny museum dedicated to Grandpa and Grandma Bigtree. The family features three children who are all interchangeably angsty and a mother that dies about twenty pages into the novel. Evidently women do not have the best of luck in Russell’s fictional world seeing as towards the end of the novel the only three female characters that are featured either become naive damsels, dead, or raped. Meanwhile, a father runs off to a casino, a brother runs away to make money, and a grandfather forgets his family altogether.

I had high expectations for Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! seeing as it was raved about on various media platforms after its debut. However, I was unimpressed. While her prose is quantifiably beautiful and rich, it reads like a college student’s first creative piece - forced and self-conscious albeit pretty. I was disappointed by the characters that I never really did fall in love with, with the female protagonist who appeared to be a whiny nine year old but who was actually an adolescent, or the angsty teenage boy whose angst I could never anchor in the story. I questioned the father’s parenting ethics as he left his two daughters on a swamp island in the Florida Everglades, leaving them both to Persephone-like journeys to the end of the story. I was bored and confused about the action in the book. At first it appeared to be realistic, and then it transitioned into a Gaiman-esque magic surrealism. But in the end a horror of real life slapped you in the face and brought you back to life. I was just queasy after this confusing roller coaster ride.