By Bob Tedder
Mt. Gilead, both by virtue of location and being graced with its fair share of Southern women, is well suited in welcoming Karen Russell’s “Swamplandia!” – one of “38 Books Every Southern Woman Should Read” – to its literary landscape.
Ava Bigtree, the book’s 13-year-old narrator, employs all the age-appropriate angst and pathos necessary in weaving a tale which while flirting with magical realism becomes deeply immersed in the phantasmagorical. Self tasked with saving herself, her family’s tourist attraction called Swamplandia and her older siblings, Ava’s odyssey is fraught with dangers real – she is, after all, an alligator wrestler – and imagined – her desperate attempt in saving her sister from a ghostly groom. Festooned with enough botanical and historical detail to make a Florida swamp a living entity, Ava’s narrative manages to lampoon the malignancy of the very industry her family depends on for survival – tourism.
From this nexus the book derives much of its sardonic humor. Although other family members strut and fret on this primeval stage it is Ava whose presence and travails provide the novel’s unsettling resolution. Filled with both sound and fury this book and its author leave it to the individual reader to decide what, if anything, Ava’s story signifies. Tragically, like the lives of many, I fear it signifies nothing. Nonetheless, “Swamplandia!” provides a story of compelling interests not only for Southern women but for all concerned with the burdens of humanity.
As such I give it a 68-degree-from-horizontal thumbs up.
The Sandhill Regional Library System (the parent organization of Mt. Gilead’s library) contains two copies of “Swamplandia!,” both available by inter-library loan. Cindy Brooks, Mt. Gilead librarian, says that depending upon availability and transportation, it can be on hand in one to two weeks. Meanwhile, The Speckled Paw has a copy on premises and will loan it out for free.