Rebranding isn’t just a strategy for businesses. It’s an even hotter trend in geography. I’m told that 20 countries have changed their names in just the last decade. One can only admire the zeal for self-reinvention that turns the Czech Republic in Czechia or Burma into Myanmar. But, honestly, the map name-changers ought to do more consumer market research. Look at poor Iceland—just imagine what it could do with a more tourist-friendly name? They ought to a negotiate a trademark exchange with Greenland, which isn't fully leveraging its superior brand. Honestly, why don’t nations conduct a few focus groups before coming up with these depressing names? The folks in Trivandrum would never have changed their name to Thiruvananthapuram if they had only talked to a few travel agents first.
But the biggest success story in geographic rebranding can be found in those pesky swamps. Once feared for their malarial atmosphere, muggy weather, and pesky mosquitoes, they have put all that behind in a glorious rebranding. The swamps have become wetlands, and summon up images of pristine ecosystems and colorful indigenous flora and fauna. Now that is how geographical rebranding ought to work.
But no one has told the proprietors of Swamplandia!, a struggling tourist attraction in the Florida wetlands. The Bigtree family like to think of Swamplandia! as an exciting theme park, but there’s little here to interest tourists besides a hokey museum that displays items relating to the family’s make-believe Native American roots (Grandpa Sawtooth was originally named Ernest Schedrach and came from Ohio), and a lot of alligators. The real draw is alligator wrestling, an athletic exhibition only a step above (or perhaps below) bullfighting and cock-fighting in status.
Swamplandia lays claim to one genuine star attraction, a prepossessing woman named Hilola Bigtree, Sawtooth’s daughter-in-law and the greatest of the female alligator wrestlers. When she dies of cancer, the theme park loses its audience. But the Bigtree family also loses its cohesion and sense of direction. Poor old Grandpa is sent to a home for the elderly in a converted boat. Hilola’s husband starts spending more and more time on the mainland, involved in mysterious and seemingly futile plans to reinvent Swamplandia!. Their three children cope in even stranger ways. The oldest, son Kiwi, plans to leave Swamplandia behind, go to school, and maybe earn some money that can help the rest of his family. His sister Osceola begins talking to dead people via the Ouija board and occult trances. The youngest Bigtree, thirteen-year-old Ava is a Swamplandia! loyalist, who stays around the alligators and has dreams of becoming a great gator wrestler and carrying on her mother’s legacy. Who knows, she might even draw audiences back to their swamp.
In the opening pages, Karen Russell seems intent on turning this amusing premise into a grand comic novel, an endearing mix of Tarzan of the Apes , Gilligan’s Island and Family Ties . But readers are advised to strap on their seat belts, because the tone of this book will twist and turn with the rapidity of a real theme-park ride. Before you’re done, you will encounter a dark psychological terrain more akin to Deliverance and Cape Fear, but also bits and pieces of other narrative styles.
The most powerful section of Swamplandia! is a Conrad-esque historical seafarer’s narrative, “The Dredgeman's Revelation," that could easily stand on its own (and has as a short story in The New Yorker ). Another sub-plot deals with Kiwi’s abandonment of Swamplandia! for a menial job in another tourist attraction. Kiwi’s new employer, the World of Darkness, is a cross between Dante’s Inferno and the inside of Jonah’s Old Testament whale. Here Russell’s sassy prose style here offers a dark satire on theme park kitsch and the hapless tourists who frequent these monuments to tackiness.
As this thumbnail summary makes clear, Swamplandia! is a bit of a compendium of writing styles. The scaffolding that holds up the book is a first-person narrative in the voice of Ava, who is our main protagonist and the emotional center of the book. But Russell shifts for long stretches into third person while recounting a seriocomic coming-of-age story about Kiwi on the mainland, and though she uses this storyline to set up some clever symbolic echoes that mock the rest of her tale, she isn’t quite as convincing here. Like her characters, Russell is at her best when she’s dealing with swamp life, and the forays into the city are more enervating than exciting.
Yet this novel holds together surprisingly well despite the sharply contrasting constituent parts. A zany comic energy propels this book in the first third. Magical realism takes over for the middle third. And a dark horror story threatens to absorb everything in the final third. Yet these counterbalance each other, and a work that could easily come across as a cut-and-paste job achieves something larger and more satisfying.
The book certainly worked wonders for Karen Russell’s career. This debut novel earned her spots on New York magazine’s honor roll of “impressive New Yorkers under the age of 26. and T he New Yorker ’s “20 under 40” list. For the National Book Foundation, she was one of the “5 under 35” honorees. In 2013, she received a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" at the age of 32. The literary world rarely hands out so many accolades to an author so young, and there’s almost always a backlash down the line to those who see to ride the fast track to authorial eminence.
For a writer so skilled in moving from comedy to horror to high literary style, the biggest challenge might simply be deciding which tone and attitude provides her the strongest platform. In any event, Russell certainly has the talent to survive the prodigy stage. Since the success of Swamplandia! , she has focused on short fiction, and perhaps that will be her major focus going forward. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she delivered another great novel— or maybe even two or three.
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature and popular culture. He is the author of ten books. His most recent book is How to Listen to Jazz (Basic Books).
A zany comic energy propels this book in the first third. Magical realism takes over for the middle third. And a dark horror story threatens to absorb everything in the final third.