Summer's here, which means vacation time. So I'm taking a vacation from reading books based in the midwest and heading straight to Florida. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell is everything its title implies. Like the Binewski family in Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, the Bigtree "tribe" live on the edge of society and earn a living being themselves. They live on one of Florida's 10,000 islands and runs a tourist show of alligator wrestling. Aside from the thousands of "mainlander" tourists, the kids only interact with each other and are blissfully unaware of life on the mainland. Kiwi is the oldest and has dreams of attending Harvard. Dreamy Ossie communes with and runs away with a ghost, leaving the youngest, Ava, to fend for herself.
Russell's Florida swamplands have Weed Witches instead of bagladies, long abandoned dredgeboats are homes to marriage inclined ghosts from the 1930s and dank canals lead to the Underworld. Each of the children live on the brink of reality and they compellingly pull us along a journey of questionable danger. Susan Orlean nearly forgets her journalistic bias in favor of seeing a rare orchid in The Orchid Thief, so why wouldn't the reader think the Bird Man a contemporary Charon?
Ms. Russell's novel is a fascinating read-- equally creepy, mysterious and funny (Kiwi's jobs and interactions with fellow "new hires" in competitor World of Darkness are worth the cover price) and Ava's love for her family is priceless. 5/5 netflix stars.
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