Swamplandia essay

Upon completion of his training Kiwi’s maiden flight is greeted by the strange sight of his sister Osceola garbed in what looks to be the tattered vestiges of Hilola’s wedding gown. She has been stranded in the swamp for a long time. She narrates that she did elope with the ghost of Louis but was abandoned during their alleged wedding ceremony.

Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! was lauded by The New York Times Book Review as a solid first novel: “Ava is a highly appealing narrator who has many talents beyond swimming with gators or taping their jaws shut. If protagonists (especially of first novels) typically bewail the mundanity of their small towns, the exotic is normal to Ava.

The story opens on a rather tragic note with the Bigtree family in the midst of suffering all manner of troubles: their clan head, Sawtooth Bigtree, has been fighting a loosing battle with dementia and must now live on a floating nursing home while Hilola, his daughter-in-law, has succumbed to cancer.

The plot of Swamplandia! is nothing special — dysfunctional family pull apart, then pull together — but the execution is. This family, wrestling with their desires and demons, will neither succumb nor triumph, but survive in their scarred way, and will lodge in the memories of anyone lucky enough to read Swamplandia!