Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell (pub. 2011)
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Caution: potential spoilers.

Well... when this first came out, I'm sure I read some very glowing reviews. I'm also fairly sure it was described as sort of magical... not a fantasy novel, but more magical realism. Having read it, now, I'm not entirely comfortable classifying it as such. I kept waiting for something magical to happen, something fantastical, but mostly it just seemed like realism, sans magic. I don't want to say whether or not anything magical or supernatural ever did happen, because that would be too spoilery. But I will say the book wasn't quite what I expected it to be, before I started reading it. And that's not a bad thing. ...Another thing that has been said about the book is that it has brilliant prose, and with that I cannot argue. It's certainly full of vivid and clever metaphors and similes, to describe just about every thing, every place, every event, every character, every thought. And that, I suppose, is where the real magic lies. The book is mainly narrated by a 13-year-old girl named Ava Bigtree, but after awhile the chapters begin alternating between her perspective and that of her 17-year-old brother, Kiwi. And the language used by the author to let us get inside their heads, see through their eyes- especially Ava's- is mainly what gives the story its fantastical quality. Well, that and the setting, the Ten Thousand Islands (off the coast of Florida), and the fact that the main characters are a family who run an alligator-wrestling theme park, called "Swamplandia!" (It would be practically impossible for a setup like that not to invoke some level of surrealism.)

Anyway, Swamplandia! is run by "Chief" Samuel Bigtree, his wife Hilola, and their three children: Ava, Kiwi, and their 16-year-old sister, Osceola (Ossie, for short). It's located on one of the islands, where the Bigtrees live by themselves, though they make occasional trips to the mainland. Early in the novel, the Chief's father, Sawtooth Bigtree, is sent to live in a retirement community. And not long after that, Hilola dies of cancer. And since she was the star performer, tourism begins to dwindle. Another major blow to the family business comes in the form of a new amusement park on the mainland, the World of Darkness. So, the Bigtrees begin to slide into debt. After awhile, Kiwi runs away to the mainland, hoping to find work and raise enough money to save Swamplandia! He gets a job at the World of Darkness, and begins learning how to act like a mainlander. (They were all much cruder and less intelligent than him, but he did sort of make a few friends.) He also begins attending night classes, hoping to earn a GED so he could enroll in a university. And not too long after Kiwi leaves the island, the Chief also goes to the mainland on an extended business trip, leaving his two daughters to look after themselves.

Even before her brother and father left, Ossie had become increasingly obsessed with talking to (and being possessed by) ghosts, though no one really believed she actually had this ability. More likely, it seemed she was either faking it or had some kind of mental illness. But one day, Ossie and Ava discover the wreck of a dredge boat. Soon after that, Ossie comes to believe that she's fallen in love with the ghost of a young man named Louis Thanksgiving, aka "the Dredgeman," who had worked (and died) on the dredge during the Great Depression. Then one night, Ossie goes to the dredge by herself, and soon thereafter, Ava meets someone called "The Bird Man," a migrant worker whose job was chasing away unwanted flocks of birds, such as buzzards. She invites him to spend the night at their house, which seemed to me like a pretty bad idea, but nothing bad came of it. The next day, Ava finds a note from Ossie, saying that she was eloping with Louis. When she tells the Bird Man about all of this, he says he could lead her to the Underworld, to find her sister and stop her from "marrying" Louis. (And of course, Ava also hopes to find her mother, there.)

This seemed to me like an even worse idea than inviting him to spend the night in her house, but... the Bird Man definitely had the vibe of a character out of some kind of fantasy story, so it wasn't completely unnatural that Ava chose to believe him. And at this point I was torn: part of me wanted to believe him, just as much as Ava did, though for me it was as much about wanting this to really be a fantasy story as it was about wanting Ava to find Ossie. An even greater part of me wanted to believe him because I knew that if he was lying about his knowledge of the Underworld... well, there was probably only one alternative explanation for him wanting to lead Ava away from her home. And I desperately didn't want that explanation to be the true one. Anyway, Ava and the Bird Man set off on his skiff, navigating the swamps on a journey that lasts a few days, heading for the entrance to the Underworld. The story alternates between Ava's experiences with the Bird Man and Kiwi's experiences on the mainland. And by the end of the book, their stories will intersect. But I've said all I really want to reveal of the plot.

Without spoiling how it all ends, I must say that there is definitely some real darkness to the story, and at one point I was really glad of the... creative prose. I mean, something happens that's hard enough to read just knowing what's actually happening; it would have been much, much worse if the description of the event had focused more on the reality of it. ...Aside from that, I also have to say that I found it to be an interesting, very well-written story, and Ava's a really good character, with a very distinctive voice. And I kind of liked the bits of local history, scattered throughout the story. And... I guess that's all I can think to say.