Well, first things first... I have seen it creeping up on my blog stats, but this post marks a milestone... Post #2000! It's definitely been a crawl to get here. This blog used a daily (or even multi-daily!) habit and these days it seems as if I only post as fast as I can read a book, which ain't very fast! And, to be honest, reaching this milestone is making me ponder whether it is time to finally throw in the cyber0towel... but we shall see, I will at least power thru the final books of 2011 and the year-end wrap-up book post.
Despite being named among the best books of 2011, I was aware that Karen Russell's debut novel Swamplandia! was not the most beloved books of the year. Goodreads did a piece on the NY TImes 100 Notable Books of the Year and this book had the dubious honor of being, one of the lowest (if not the lowest) reader-rated books from the list. I suspected it was just a love it/hate it kind of book and had remained curious about since its publication in the spring and being a fan of "quirky" - tho I am learning that it is only to a certain gray-ish degree - I thought I would give it a shot.
It started out on-fire and, having avoided most of the negative reviews beforehand, I was having trouble figuring out what exactly was wrong with this story of a struggling alligator theme-park-owning family reeling from the loss of their wife/mother and headline act in the gator show. It was all a bit odd, but interesting, but then the story splits into two: a surreal-ish journey through the swamps with the two sisters and a more reality-based fish-out-of-water (or "gator out of the swamp"?!) storyline of the older brother's move to the mainland.
While there is much to appreciate about both stories, I suspect many readers will have a preference of one over the other. For me, while more "special" and certainly more literary, the sisters' story dragged on way too long, was just a tad too strange, was hard to visualize (couldn't get that mental picture of the setting) and lacking in purpose for my taste. I was much more engaged with the brother storyline though seemed to play second-fiddle and only served to ultimately pull the characters together again in a bit too tidy of an ending.
There is no denying Russell's literary talent and I enjoyed the characters and the premise as well, I just was not totally enamored with the novel. I contemplated about an alternate version where we join these characters a year or two before this books starts, a bit more of Swamplandia! and the mother, who are merely ghosts here. Still an interesting book, but one that I would only recommend on a case-by-case basis. 3.5 stars with Goodreads forcing a round-down to 3.
Two more books to go for 2011! At the moment, I am tackling a literary behemoth that will take me into (and "count") for 2012, but before that I squeezed in two novellas (one pretty substantial and the other... well, not)... so still a bit more to go!
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