Swamplandia! (!)

Allow me the extra exclamation mark! To those who disparage its use as ditz or adolescent emotion for thought, I say its use here is perfect. Swamplandia! is, in short, awesome. Karen Russell's novel has that rare stable of qualities that make a book complete – energy, life force, and authentic caring for characters that suffer familiar hurts in a completely foreign terrain. Russell never loses interest in her characters. The book is suffused with energy. She’s never the omnipresent puppet master, commanding her characters into foibles and social gaffes that we can laugh at from the comfortable perch of our reaching chairs (F__n!). She’s never detached, wry, or too cool. Story simply comes first.

The book follows the trials of the Bigtree family, rulers of a gator theme park housed on a tiny island in the Florida Keys. After the death of the matriarch and star of the island’s gator show, the park begins a slow and certain slide into financial ruin. Each member of the family struggles to reconcile with the encroaching reality of an outside world.

The story has some heartbreaking moments – moments where children for the first time recognize vulnerabilities in their parents, the consequences of living a life outside the mainstream, and full recognition of the infinite gifts of family. Those words are easy, neat. But the back-story to each is mined from murky depths, made up of heart stuff that requires not only emotional intelligence but also generosity and exact language. Even when horrors occur – and they do! – they unfold so gently it sends a shudder right through you. Resolution may not be found on the next page, but there is a strong undercurrent of greater understanding carrying you through to help you make peace with the truly unexplainable.

The only thing to dampen my enthusiasm (!) just a little bit was the dim echo of another writer behind Russell’s voice. I thought perhaps George Saunders whispered near because he also mentored an old friend of mine, a writer hailing from Florida. Perhaps there is some cosmic connection – quirkiness of state geography transmogrified to prose. The back flap seems to confirm some kind of personal link. And then I was made to recall  Civilwarland in Bad Decline where some same characters and conflicts take center stage (e.g., dying theme park, a ghost (?)). Does it matter that I thought of George Saunders, reading this book? I’m not sure. Why did it dim reading pleasure, if only subtly? Why do we want a singular voice? Do we? It seems that the marketplace prefers the voice of the clever (male) monolith. In Swamplandia! that voice has no place.  I was happy to be on an island of Russell’s making -- even if I could hear Saunders’ voice, just audible every now and then, letting me know the ferry was waiting to take me back to the mainland.