Not long after I started working at Lemuria last summer, our Random House reps stopped by to pitch some of the upcoming titles to us booksellers. When they pulled out advanced reader copies of Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! I thought there was going to be a real knock-down drag-out bookseller battle to see who got their hands on one. I had never heard of Karen Russell at that point, but it was enough to convince me that I needed to see what she was all about.
I did a little research on Russell and found out that she had been chosen by The New Yorker for their fiction feature “20 Under 40,” which, as the name suggests, provides interviews and stories by 20 writers under 40 that The New Yorker considers to be worth watching and following as their careers unfold. I’m an avid reader of New Yorker fiction picks so I took their choice of Russell to be an excellent sign.
The next week I purchased a copy of Russell’s short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and devoured it (much like a girl raised by a wolf, I guess you could say). It’s the kind of short story collection that I could read over and over again, and I wish that my own life was enveloped in the kind of magical realism that Russell invents in St. Lucy’s. The novel Swamplandia! is an expansion of “Ava Wrestles an Alligator,” the first story in this collection, so I found myself with familiar characters except now they had a back story.
In the New York Times book review Emma Donoghue had this to say about Russell’s magical realism and the evolution of “Ava Wrestles an Alligator” to the novel Swamplandia!:
“The setting and the sisters (Ava and Osceola, a k a Ossie) are the same, but they now benefit from a full back story. It’s easier to care about the pleasures and miseries of life in a failing gator park when we know how the father (the self-proclaimed Chief Bigtree) and his family ended up there, and are led to understand what goes into the routine of putting on death-defying shows every day. If Russell’s style is a North American take on magical realism, then her commitment to life’s nitty-gritties anchors the magic; we are more inclined to suspend disbelief at the moments that verge on the paranormal because she has turned “Swamplandia!” into a credible world.”
I agree with Donoghue 100% when it comes to the believability of Swamplandia!. Though there is still that sense of magic, the story takes a darker, grittier turn as reality sets in. It’s the “nitty-gritty” that makes this book truly remarkable. Russell presents you with a quirky, larger than life family—a 13 year old girl whose narration is wise beyond her years, a teenage brother who runs off to work for the rival theme park to save his family, a faux Indian chief father, and a sister who fancies herself in love with a ghost, and yet their story is believable. When this family and their theme park are torn apart by loss, you can sympathize with them. Despite all of their quirks Russell makes the Bigtrees into a real family struggling with the real loss of both a mother and of the Florida swamplands culture that is all that they know.
Russell is a great new voice for Southern fiction, and we’re so happy to have her visit Lemuria. I hope you will read her books, come to her signing and reading, and love her work as much as I (and my co-workers) do.
For Russell’s interview with the New Yorker, you can go here.
Karen Russell will be at Lemuria signing and reading today at 5pm. Swamplandia! is our April First Editions Club selection.
Swamplandia! is published by Knopf with a first printing of 40,000. As of today the book is in its 9th printing . . . and counting. -Kaycie
Sometimes when we write The Story behind the Pick for our First Editions Club, few readers have ever heard of the book, but that is not the case with Téa Obreht’s 
Téa Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia, and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. As mentioned before, she has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Téa Obreht lives in Ithaca, New York. (
The experience of holding a book, feeling its physicality and being hypnotized by its contents. The opening to read, closing to ponder and opening again to continue. Underlining, turning the pages down, personal code-marking important phrases and interpreting with your own reflections on the white space. Reaching the last page, then closing with the snap of accomplishment or just holding caught up in the meditation of afterthought and reflection, then maybe reviewing the dust jacket commentary.
