The book jacket is charmingly illustrated in a style deliberately old fashioned and strongly reminiscent of children's book covers. This just the first in a series of mental challenges awaiting the reader. This is not a children's book. It is a story about an unusual family, who live on an island in the Florida swampland. Here they have created a complete theme park (the Swamplandia! of the title). They are socially isolated... none of the children go to school, and their sole focus is on presenting the alligator wrestling shows daily. Though they are not actually of American Indian descent, they have assumed some vague Native American persona as a family.
The story is partly told by Ava, a fourteen year old daughter. Her narrative voice is in the first person, and we come to understand the events that overtake the family through her eyes. It is a little bewildering, then, when Kiwi (her older brother) leaves the island, and we follow his adventures via a third person narrative voice. In between the two siblings is Ossie, who has responded to her isolation by becoming obsessed by spirits and who believes she has fallen in love with a ghost of a former dredge operator.
The story is about the dissolution of the dream world that the parents created on the island. Illness, senility, ambition, competition and delusions all create a seemingly unsolvable morass. Kiwi exits to the mainland and painfully has to learn how to fit in with foul mouthed companions with meager ambitions. After Ossie disappears, Ava is befriended by someone who promises help to find her... and through her eyes we are swept up in a seemingly supernatural adventure.
Russell's language is poetic and lyrical at times, perhaps too much so for a story about a bewildered fourteen year old. The characters are richly drawn, with a impressionistic skill that illuminates much more than the incidents we are invited to witness.
This is far from a comfortable book to read. While we start in a young teenager's idyll, we are soon witness to disturbing events, including a sexual assault and the apparent shattering of Ossie's sanity. Despite the dark events there is a declaration of hope. Kiwi, despite his carnal acquaintances, maintains an inner innocence. Each of the three siblings is offered a way through, and together are able to help their father, lost in the impossibility of his dream, to step towards the a more realistic outlook.
This is not a book for those who find sexual assault or puerile language too confronting. It is complex and demanding of the reader, though very satisfying in parts. I thought a centre section reflecting on some historical aspects of the area was intrusive and not central to the involving narrative, but I'm glad to have read it and keen to look for other books by the same author. This is not quite a Magic Realism book in the sense that there ultimately seems to be rational explanations for everything that happens... yet the experience is very similar as we are taken on a journey through Ava's mutable perceptions. If there is one book it strongly reminded me of, it is Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children"... a book that I passionately admire.
Andrew Lack
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