Swamplandia!
Karen Russell was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists (before she had written a novel) AND one of The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list AND one of the 5 under 35 by the National Book Foundation. That’s a lot of hype. Despite the plaudits, I was on the fence about reading Russell’s new book and first novel Swamplandia! The novel takes place in South Florida and features a family-owned alligator wrestling attraction. When I first read that description, I thought that I would do best to steer well clear of the book. It sounded a little too wacky for wacky’s sake. I lived in South Florida for a decade and have read my fair share of Karl Hiaassen. In the end I followed the hype, and it was the right choice. Yes, that is an exclamation point in the title.
The Bigtree family owns and operates Swamplandia!, a tourist attraction nestled in the 10,000 Islands on the west coast of South Florida. The star performer, Hilola Bigtree, is featured on billboards up and down I-75 that feature the signature act at the park:
Four times a week, our mother climbed the ladder above the Gator Pit in a green two-piece bathing suit and stood on the edge of the diving board, breathing. If it was windy, her long hair flew around her face, but the rest of her stayed motionless…Her shoulder blades pinched back before she dove.
The Bigtree family becomes unmoored when they lose their mother, wife, and main draw to illness. Their audience begins to dwindle even before the specter of new competition arises in the form of a mainland theme park ominously called “The World of Darkness.” The father of the Bigtree clan, known even to his children as “Chief”, disappears for weeks at a time to discuss financial opportunities with potential investors. The three children, already nearly feral, each undertake their own adventures as their island garden idyll rapidly becomes a faded image of its former glory.
Largely on their own, the children leave their Eden and find their own versions of Hell. Hell is, of course, the real world. The children had grown up in an insular world complete with elaborate family myths. The Bigtree museum in Swamplandia was constantly updated and arranged to fall in line with Chief Bigtree’s inner narrative of who the family really were – or ought to be. The Bigtree’s, for example, are not even Native Americans:
Although there was not a drop of Seminole or Miccosukee blood in us, the Chief always costumed us in tribal apparel for the photographs he took. He said we were “our own Indians.”
Swamplandia! is a coming of age story not only for the Bigtree children, but also for Chief Bigtree. In many ways, it can be read as an allegory for the growing pains of the State of Florida itself. Swamplandia! is a disarmingly charming novel that packs a big punch. I am looking forward to checking out Karen Russell’s reading at the Decatur Book Festival.
June 22, 2011 9:08 am 
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