Swamplandia!

 Swampladia!

By Karen Russell

I picked this up a few weeks ago because it is set in the brackish swamp near the Everglades, which we

were about to visit over April break.

The book tells the story of the Bigtree family who operate a theme park, Swamplandia!, on an island, or hammock, in the Everglades area of Florida. Everything is going swimmingly until the star of the family, Hiolia, dies. She had been the main attraction of Swamplandia!; her act involved diving into a gator-filled pool and swimming around it unscathed. After her death, visitors stop coming, which is compounded by the opening of a nearby rival theme park, The World of Darkness. Or, just The World.

All of this pulls the rest of the Bigtree family -- Osceola, 16; Kiwi, 17; Ava, 13; and Chief, middle aged -- to the breaking point. Kiwi is the first to leave. He heads to the mainland to work at The World, both to scout its features but also to try to make some money that might get Swamplandia!'s creditors off the family's back. Next is the Chief, who goes on one of his semi-annual but mysterious business trips (which turns out to be emceeing at a depressing strip club). Osceola (Ossie), meanwhile, seems to have something of a psychotic break and begins spending her time with a Spiritualist book that, she believes, allows her to commune with the dead. She goes through a series of ghost boyfriends before deciding to elope with one of them, a former dredge boat worker who takes her deep into the swamp to a portal to the underworld that will allow them to marry. Ava, now alone, is distraught. She shares her story with an itinerant "bird man", whose "job" is to scare away buzzards from area businesses and homes. The bird man says he knows all about the underworld, and promises to take Ava there in an attempt to save Osceoloa.

The thing about the Bigtree family is that they've always lived in a fantasy world. Their last name, Bigtree, is, in fact, made up, designed to associate Swamplandia! with vague Native American roots. The Chief isn't a chief of anything. This idea is reinforced by a "museum" at the theme park that preserves various "artifacts" of the Bigtree story. They are, in fact, simply mementos from the family's life, trumped up to fill a kind of grand story.

And so it is easy to believe that Ava believes in this underworld, especially given the author's lovely description of the environment in which the Bigtree's live. It starts to make sense that there would be a portal to the underworld out there, and I was totally ready for this book to be about the magic that exists in the most special places in our world, in nature. It seemed like it would be, even more than 250 pages in.

But that was not to be. The Birdman is not who Ava thinks he is. As a reader, I wanted to see him like Ava did. Looking back, though, it was clear: this is a shady character. In a scene that shocked me, that seemed to rip me from the charming and, many times, funny, tale I had bought into, Ava is raped. It still turns my stomach thinking about it. Ava is very violently torn from her fantasy world. 

And so it goes with the other Bigtrees. Kiwi learns that he cannot single-handedly save the family's home. He learns, too, that his sense of himself as a scholar -- no schools at Swamplandia!, only homeschool -- is misguided. He has a lot to learn. Osceola's ghost leaves her, just in the nick of time, the noose that would serve as a "portal" swinging in the background when she is rescued. And the Chief accepts that he will have to become a mainlander after all. The silver lining: when the fantasy bubble is burst, the family realizes that they are far stronger together than they are apart.

This was certainly an engrossing book. I found the ending jarring, to say the least. The rape scene made me feel a little betrayed by the author and, after looking at some online reviews, others have felt similarly. I still wonder whether it was necessary. I wonder whether Ava could have gotten away and the story would have been the same. 

Buckeye

 Buckeye

By Patrick Ryan

Cal is born with one leg significantly shorter than the other, and so can't go off and fight in World War II.
Which, it turns out, is a blessing and a curse. He does his best to help out, joining the local defense patrol to keep a watch on the streets and skies of Bonhomie, OH, but, soon enough, he'll be one of the few men of a certain age left in town. His father is glad; he is not.

Still, it works out okay for him. He meets a girl, Becky, who soon becomes his wife. Becky's dad runs a local hardware store and offers him a job that is a good sight better than his work at a local cement factory. His father-in-law pays for a house. A child comes. Life is good.

But, then, trouble. Becky is...quirky, some might say. She reads. She works at a stationary store. She wears a beret. She says things. Oh, and she might be able to commune with the spirit world. What else can explain how she was able to locate the body of a man who went missing and wound up dead in his car on the side of the road? With war in full swing, Becky uses her gift to help the many people hoping to reconnect with their loved ones.

But Cal doesn't believe.

Which is fine, for a while, until one day, when Cal, at the behest of his father-in-law, runs out of town a quack author who is ostensibly writing a book about spirit mediums but apparently just wants to get into Becky's pants. Becky is not amused -- she can handle herself. And then it comes out: Cal really doesn't believe. The two move into separate bedrooms.

So when the woman who came into the basement of the hardware store to listen to the radio and kiss him on what turned out to be VE day reappears and seems to suggest that perhaps they could do more than kiss, Cal is in a rough enough place emotionally to accept. 

The woman, Margaret, has a husband overseas. But their marriage isn't what Margaret had hoped for. She's said yes to Felix's proposal because, frankly, she didn't know better. She'd grown up in an orphanage, and was looking for stable ground. Plus, Felix was handsome. That said, he seemed far less interested in sex than the men Margaret had been seeing casually, and his libido didn't seem to pick up in matrimony. Felix, it turned out, was gay, though she didn't know it. Two things filled her with dread: Felix dying and Felix returning home.

He does return home after his ship is torpedoed and the man he had fallen in love with dies. He comes back an even more broken and confused man than he was when he left. He is able to make love to Margaret on the first night of his homecoming. So the baby that comes could be his. But it isn't. Which is when the lies begin.

Felix is able to find peace through Becky, who is able to contact Augie, Felix's love, from beyond the grave. The message: live -- for both of them. But in connecting with Augie, Felix inadvertently introduces his son-not-son to Becky and Cal's son, Skip. So things become complicated. Especially when Margaret learns of Felix's affair and Felix learns of Margaret's affair and Margaret tells Becky about her affair -- and then Margaret, overwhelmed (or something else) leaves town. 

The news she leaves, and her departure itself, is like a bomb for the two families. But eventually they heal. And it is in the telling of this healing -- even after Skip dies in Vietnam and Tom, his half brother, distances himself from everyone after learning the truth -- that the beauty of this novel lies. It is sweet, and tender, and sad, and uplifting all at the same time. I loved it. 

Mother Night

 Mother Night

By Kurt Vonnegut

This is another entry in the Anthony Jeselnick book club. It's a new Vonnegut for me that I'd never heard
of.

Like all Vonnegut, it's an absurd tale. The main character, Howard Campbell Jr., was born in the United States but moved to Germany soon after with his family. By the time the Nazis took over, he had built a life there as a playwright and had married a German woman. So while his parents moved back to upstate New York, he stayed. Since his wife was a well-known actress and he a well-known author, his social circle included the upper echelon of Nazi leadership, and soon he was recruited as a propagandist.

But he was also recruited by the Americans, who convinced him to use well-timed pauses in his broadcasts to convey secret information to their leadership. He never knew what information he was passing along, and no one ever suspected his involvement. And, after the war, no one on the American side would acknowledge it, either. They kept him out of jail through behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Still, Nazi hunters still regarded him as an enemy that needed to be brought to justice.

They came knocking on his door one day after Howard's new friend, who himself was an agent of the Russians, learned of his true identity and tipped off a group of neo-Nazis, who published a celebration of news of Campbell's being alive and well, which, in turn, tipped off Nazi hunters. Fleeing for his life, he is embraced by a rag-tag but rich group of neo-Nazis, which include the "Black Fuhrer" and a former priest defrocked for his bigotry (and drunkenness).

It's all told as a memoir written in an Israeli jail as Campbell waits for his trial. So the whole book, we, the reader, are wondering: How did he get there? The twist -- spoiler alert -- it was Campbell who turned himself in. When he receives a letter from the American who recruited him as a spy saying he will testify at the trial and save him, Campbell holds himself accountable for his misdeeds with a rope.

Ah, Vonnegut. It was all so much more humorous than I related above. Somehow, he still seems so radical in his absurdity. We need another Vonnegut for these times.

The British are Coming

 The British are Coming

By Rick Atkinson

Dad gifted me this book on Valentine's Day to mark the semiquincentennial of the beginning of the
American Revolution. Which, of course, started in 1775. We actually went to Boston last year and saw a re-enactment of Paul Revere's row across the Charles to begin his famous ride north.

This is a detailed -- and I mean detailed -- account of the first two years of the war, beginning with Lexington and Concord and ending with American victories at Trenton and Princeton.

Those successes were badly needed. One of my takeaways from the book is just how tenuous the American situation was in those early years. I knew it, but forgot it. After Bunker Hill and an eventual successful siege of Boston, there was a long stretch of blunders that, in many instances, nearly crushed the army. There was disaster in Quebec and in New York. Meanwhile troops lived what seemed like awful lives with not enough food. No wonder many of them went back to their farms when their enlistments were up. 

Luckily for the Americans, the British were pretty blundery too. Howe had several chances to obliterate the rebellion, but just couldn't seem to make the decisive move that would do it. The arrogance of British officers led them to underestimate the colonists, with deadly results.

This is the first nonfiction book I've read in a while. My ability to keep with it, at 564 pages, owed much to Atkinson's writing. He does know how to turn a phrase. Not sure yet whether I'll pick up the next volume when 2027 rolls around.

Paradais

 Paradais

By Fernanda Melchor

Well, that was an intense one. I can across the title as part of comedian Anthony Jeselnik's book club,
which he launched this year. He's a pretty dark comic; this is a pretty dark tale.

It takes place in Mexico on the grounds of a gated community called Paradais -- Paradise, though the day laborers who work there can't pronounce it. It tells of the connection between the haves, who live in the community, and the have-nots, who work at the place.

Representing the latter is a teenager named Polo. He has dropped out of school and wants desperately to drop out of the life that has followed. He hates his work as a gardener at Paradais as well as the residents there. And yet he forms a "friendship" with who he refers to as Fatboy so often that I can't actually remember his name. Fatboy is rich. He lives with his grandparents, away from his abusive, lawyer father. Polo and Fatboy take to bouts of drinking after Polo's shift. Not only does Polo love drinking, he desperately wants to avoid arriving at home while his mother and cousin are up.

That's because his cousin is pregnant. For the first two thirds of the book, we are led to believe that the father could be anyone; "everyone" knows she sleeps around. But then we learn that it is probably Polo's, though he won't admit it was his "fault" because his cousin kept following him around and "begging" for it. Polo is searching for any way out. He tries to contact his older cousin, Milton, who has been abducted by the local drug cartel, asking him to vouch for him in the group, but he receives only sermons about how that life is no life for anyone.

Fatboy's problems are more internal. He is addicted to porn, as well as to one of his neighbors, the glamorous wife of a television personality. During their drinking sessions, he goes on and on and on about what he wants to "do" to this woman. And then one day, a plan forms. The family, Fatboy discovers, does not lock their house. So why don't they go in there and kill the husband. Fatboy can rape the wife while Polo robs them of their riches. It is unclear exactly what Polo thinks of this plan. But, nevertheless, he finds himself at Walmart buying face masks, condoms, and "kidnapper's" (ie duct) tape.

Next thing you know, they are in the house. The husband is dead. The children are bound and gagged. Polo is sampling the high-end booze, and Fatboy is desperately trying to get it up so he can fulfill his fantasy. He ends up with fatal knife wounds that don't kill him until he is able to shoot the wife. It is a grisly scene, and Polo runs, swimming the river that separates the gated community from the real community Polo lives in. The river is symbolic for Polo: it's the one place that holds positive memories for him. He used to fish the river with his grandfather, had spoken of building a boat together one day.

Polo goes to sleep. Wakes up. Heads back to work like every day. Everything is normal. No one has noticed -- because no one behind the gate can fathom that their paradise could be lost. Turns out, it was gone way before they knew it.

The God of the Woods

 The God of the Woods

By Liz Moore

I heard this author on Fresh Air. She sounded good, so I picked up the book.

It tells the story of a wealthy family, the Van Laars, who have established an estate in the Adirondacks.

Attached to it is an unconventional summer camp, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, designed to teach young people to love, respect, and -- and survive -- nature. One of the hallmarks is a survival week, where campers are taken to the woods and left to fend for themselves.

All is not well with the Van Laars. Alice Van Laar married her husband, Peter (Peter III, actually, since the name has been passed down through generations) at the age of 18, and is way in over her head. It is curious why Peter asked for her hand when, afterwards, he seems so annoyed with her. Perhaps he thought he could mold her into the woman he wanted to marry? No such luck. Alice is miserable except for one bright spot -- her son, Bear. He is, by all accounts a wonderful child, and Alice throws herself into him. So it is beyond catastrophic when, one day, Bear disappears. Despite mobilizing the whole surrounding town and state police, he stays missing.

And then, fourteen years later, it happens again. This time, it is the Van Laars daughter, Barbara, who goes missing. Alice does not share the same maternal bond with Barbara that she did with Bear; there is, really, no bond at all. She is a shell of a human, addicted to some sort of pill her doctor prescribed her during a stay at an institution following Bear's disappearance. She could hear him speak, she said. And Peter doesn't have the time of day; she is, after all, a girl, and so won't do the chief duty of his offspring: take over the family banking business.

Still, there is an outcry. There is mobilization. There are interviews. In them untangles quite the web of lies meant to uphold the appearance of upper-class respectability. It is infuriating as a reader to see Barbara's disappearance almost pinned on one of the "help" -- must as Bear's was in the 1960s. 

Then, a breakthrough. The New York State Police's first female investigator somehow develops a level of trust with an escaped sexual predator, one that encourages him to open up about the whereabouts of young Bear, or his remains anyway. They find them. Then the truth comes out. Alice Van Laar, drunk, capsized a rowboat with Bear in it. He drowned. But in order to keep up appearances, her husband and father-in-law conspired to pin the deed on a groundskeeper. Alice, kept drugged up, never finds out the truth. 

Meanwhile, it turns out Barbara is just fine. She had developed an escape plan with the camp's director and ends up alone on an island cabin. The investigator, Judy, knows the truth, but also knows enough to keep it to herself.

That's really just a small synopsis of the book. It's lengthy and spans several decades. The author did a wonderful job of bringing this world to life. The narration switches between many characters. Sometimes, I find this hard to follow, but in this book I had no trouble keeping up. Embedded in the story are other themes, primarily an investigation of the role of women in society, high and low, at the time. A wonderful, page-turning read.

Heart the Lover

 Heart the Lover

By Lily King

My reaction to the first part of this book was: Ugh. It is set in the late 1980s in a Pennsylvania college,
where there develops something of a love triangle between characters named Jordan (the girl) and two best friends, Sam and Yash. It is an angsty time for all of them as they fall into and out of love with one another. There comes a time when Jordan and Yash are on the cusp of a future together. Jordan moves back from Paris to New York, thinking she is going to meet Yash there. But he never shows. Never even calls. 

The "ugh" is because it recalled similar times of my own, thinking I had met "the one", only to have that fall through, and generally feeling like a happy life partnership -- like the one I have now -- was an impossibility. I didn't like that feeling, and didn't particularly care for the process that got me to where I am today.

Erin, who read this book before me, had her own ugh, which was similar to the reviewer on NPR. It recalled for her the misogyny baked into higher education, where males are seen as the true possessors of knowledge and women objects who should bow before their knowledge. I saw this only when it was pointed out to me, perhaps proof of its existence.

But I made it through that first part. And that's when the novel picked up for me. It fast forwards several decades to when Jordan, whose actual name is Casey, is in her 40s, married in Maine, with a house and two kids. Her old flame, Yash, drops by on his way through a tour up the state's coast. Reading this part felt like home. Like I was reading about my own life. 

I hope I wasn't, because there is, of course, a twist. Casey's son develops a brain tumor, and domestic bliss turns into a nightmare of waiting for a surgery that may give him a new lease on life, kill him, or, worse, turn him into a vegetable. Meanwhile, Yash, too, is suffering from cancer. Casey visits him at his hospital deathbed. They hash some things out, and Casey reveals that she'd been 5 months pregnant when Yash stood her up in New York. She is, briefly, torn out of her life and into the past. 

It's no less excruciating than the beginning of the novel, and yet: it's middle aged. I don't often think of myself that way, but, since I identified so strongly with that portion of the novel, perhaps I should.