Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

     Karen Russell's debut, Pulitzer Prize nominated novel takes us deep into the Florida marshes to Swamplandia!, which was once "the Number One Gator-Themed Park and Swamp Cafe in the area."  Swamplandia! featured all kinds of attractions, but their headliner was the famous Hilola Bigtree: wife, mother of three, and "world-famous alligator wrestler."  But in the prime of Swamplandia!, Hilola died suddenly of an extremely aggressive form of ovarian cancer.  Hilola's death is earth-shattering for the rest of the Bigtree family, but 13 year-old Ava Bigtree is determined to follow in her mother's footsteps and master the skill of gator wrestling.

     Unfortunately, the rest of the Bigtrees aren't as optimistic about the park's future.  Ava's older sister, Osceola, has retreated inside herself and claims to be both possessed by and engaged to a ghost.  Their older brother, Kiwi, decides to leave the swamp and find a job on the mainland, and their father, The Chief, is increasingly vague on the subject of their financial situation.  But Ava is determined to save the swamp and reunite her family - a job that turns out to be much more perilous than wrestling gators.

     Swamplandia! follows a variety of themes, but more than anything, it is a novel about loss and grief.  As Ava says in retrospect, "I didn't realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another - bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave" (p. 9).  But Ava soon finds out that dying isn't the worst part of death.  Grief is much worse, especially the kind that tears your family apart, clouds your judgment, and challenges your sanity.  Osceola is metaphorically "possessed" by grief.  Ava's grief is suppressed by concern for her sister and the future of the park, but bubbling just below the murky surface in her desire to become a gator wrestler.  And Kiwi's grief is played out in his descent into The World of Darkness - a rival mainland theme park where he is employed.  The Bigtree family at first attempts an attitude of "the show must go on," but how can the show go on if the star is dead and the supporting cast is in mourning?

     The novel also explores the dichotomy of memory and reality.  Osceola stays as far away from reality as possible, but Ava and Kiwi must slowly face the towering facts.  While Hilola Bigtree is a superhero to her family, in reality, Swamplandia! was never much more than an obscure sideshow attraction.  In the cold light of maturity, their shimmering childhood is not quite as bright as they remember.

     For the quirky, eccentric characters of Swamplandia!, life is full of haunted little surprises.  This is especially true for Ava, whose narration serves to chronicle the end of her mother's story just as much as it charts the beginning of her own coming-of-age story.  And this idea of a blurry convergence is where Karen Russell really shines as a writer.  Whether it's the convergence of life and death, innocence and experience, or fear and courage, Swamplandia! couldn't be a more perfect locale for such a merging.  After all, there's no better place for redemption than a southern swampland, right?

     This book received tremendous praise after its Pulitzer Prize nomination, and while I agree that Russell's prose is spectacular, it's important to keep in mind that Swamplandia! is a very character-driven novel.  Compared to the level of character development, the plot may feel a bit lackluster, and even disjointed at times.  But even so, Karen Russell's poetic prose and stylistic subtleties are more than enough to engage readers.

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Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

     Cleopatra has been a household name for centuries.  The notorious Queen of Egypt has been immortalized by tales of her beauty, cunning, and sexual presence.  Even Mr. William Shakespeare deemed her worthy of starring in one of his most famous plays, Antony and Cleopatra.  But more than two thousand years after her reign, we still do not have a complete biographical portrait of the Queen of the Nile.  As Stacy Schiff points out, most firsthand accounts of Cleopatra are incomplete or bias, as they were mostly written by her enemies.  But Schiff is not a Pulitzer Prize winning biographer for no reason.  In her recent biography of Cleopatra, we have a more comprehensive understanding of Cleopatra's life than ever before.  Very few (if any) primary sources regarding the famous Queen of Egypt survive, but Schiff compiled hundreds of sources from ancient Rome, Egypt, and Greece to provide a much clearer picture of what Cleopatra's existence was actually like.

     The woman we know today as Cleopatra was actually born Cleopatra VII Philopater.  In a nation constantly on the brink of civil war, Cleopatra offered strength, leadership, and hope for unification and peace.  After all, her people knew her as the first pharaoh who bothered to learn their language.  Depending on who you asked, Cleopatra might have been described as a goddess, a leader, a traitor, or a whore.  Even so, the world knew her name, and we've never forgotten it or her influence.

     As a work of biographical research, Cleopatra is impressive - the book is thorough, well-organized, and as comprehensive as it can possibly be.  But as a work of literature, I found Cleopatra to be slow, overwhelming, and dull.  Perhaps if you have a thorough working knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman history then it would be an entertaining read, but for those of us who are not historians, the book feels like homework - after all, the notes, bibliography, and index combined are half as long as the text itself.  As much as I appreciate and respect Stacy Schiff's level of research and the amount of time she dedicated to writing this book, I was disappointed by how very little I enjoyed the reading experience.  I think I spent just as much time looking up the names of obscure historians, philosophers, and political figures as I did reading the text.  I didn't expect this book to be much of a page turner, but I did think it would be a little more engrossing.  This is not our best book club choice by any means.  However, if you have a personal or professional interest in Cleopatra or ancient Rome, Greece, or Egypt, Cleopatra might be just the thing for you.

     This is one of those books that I'm glad I read (for educational purposes), but I'm also glad it's over.  But again, I do want to reiterate the admiration and reverence I have for Stacy Schiff and her ability to turn one of the most mysterious and elusive women in the world into a humanized, well-balanced and better-understood historical figure.

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Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

     There has been a great deal of discussion surrounding Denis Johnson's 2002 novella, Train Dreams, especially since it was nominated for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  But as you may recall, the judges did not choose a winner for the fiction category this year.  Even so, Train Dreams offers a powerful portrait of Robert Grainier, a laborer in Idaho in the early 1900s.  Grainier has worked in lumber, agriculture, or the railroad industry for most of his life.  His mind, body, and spirit have been exhausted by days of long, hard labor and nights of quiet loneliness.  When a fire destroys his homestead and his family - a wife and infant daughter - he is briefly shattered.  But Grainier came of age in the days of westward expansion, so he perseveres - quietly but steadily.  Johnson succinctly describes Robert Grainier as such:

Grainier himself lived more than eighty years, well into the 1960s.  In his time he'd traveled west to within a few dozen miles of the Pacific, though he'd never seen the ocean itself, and as far east as the town of Libby, forty miles inside Montana.  He'd had one lover - his wife, Gladys - owned one acre of property, two horses, and a wagon.  He'd never been drunk.  He'd never purchased a firearm or spoken into a telephone.  He'd ridden on trains regularly, many times in automobiles, and once in an aircraft.  During the last decade of his life he watched television whenever he was in town.  He had no idea who his parents might have been, and he left no heirs behind him. (p. 113)

     Grainier appears to be a man with no past or present, and very little future.  He was raised by an aunt and uncle who died before he could ask about his origins, both his wife and daughter were taken from him just a few years into marriage, and he never married again.  In fact, his only companions for the rest of his life consisted of a few stray dogs.

     But people like Robert Grainier are a very real part of our American heritage, even if their stories are often forgotten or lost.  Grainier appears to have lived a simple life - he worked all day, slept fitfully, and died with no heirs to carry on his name or memory.  But he also knew friendship, happiness, grief, lust, fear, devastation, and excitement.  We live in an age where life's success is measured by accomplishments and legacies.  A man like Robert Grainier would have achieved very few accomplishments by today's standards and left behind little that would resemble a legacy, but with Train Dreams, Denis Johnson starkly draws our attention to the unrecalled aspects of American heritage.  The novella is brief, but powerful, offering a portrait of forgotten Americana and questioning what it means to live completely and leave a legacy.

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Favorite Fiction: Toni Morrison

Over the years, Toni Morrison has earned great respect as an author.  As the winner of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Pearl Buck Award (just to name a few), Toni Morrison has been a tremendous influence on American literature.  Now, at the age of 81, she is publishing her 10th novel, Home, which will be released next week on May 8.  In celebration of her many accomplishments and to gear up for the new release, here are Hooked Bookworm's top 5 Toni Morrison novels:

Pulitzer news

Apparently no one gets the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year.  Nominees included Karen Russell (Swamplandia!), David Foster Wallace (The Pale King), and Denis Johnson (Train Dreams), but the Pulitzer board just could not agree on a winner, so there isn't one.  Read the full story over at the Huffington Post.