Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

I have always considered myself to be fairly imaginative, maybe even a bit more imaginative than most. But I could never in a million years have come up with the plot of this book. The Bigtree family runs a gator-wrestling theme park, Swamplandia!, on one of the small islands in the Florida Keys. The mother has recently died of cancer, the grandfather has started biting customers and has had to be taken to live at the Out to Sea Retirement Community, the big brother has run away to the mainland and gone to work for a competitor theme park, and the father has left to "take care of some business." Left by themselves on the island, the older sister has eloped with a "ghost," leaving the youngest, Ava, to try to deal alone with all the upset and confusion. About this time a mysterious Birdman comes along who offers to guide Ave on a trip through the swamps to the Underworld to find her runaway sister.

I ask you--what kind of imagination comes up with that story?

This is not magic realism, which inserts the fantastic into the mundane, but surrealism, where everything is exaggerated and askew. And it is often very, very funny. For example, the rival theme park is World of Darkness, which features blood-red swimming pools and whose customers are known as "Lost Souls." Its four-man team of pilots who take patrons on air tours to view areas of ecological devastation are known as "The Four Pilots of the Apocalypse."

For the first 150 pages or so I was enchanted by this novel. Russell has a knack of description and unexpected turn-of-phrase that is near genius, and I kept wondering, "Why did this not win the Pulitzer Prize?" Then she seemed to bog down in the plot turns, and the tone of the first half of the book seemed somewhat inappropriate when attached to the last half. Then I understood why the book did not win the Pulitzer.

Nevertheless, it is a most interesting and amusing read, better than most. And it has an important message about family love and loyalty. Recommended.