Karen Russell (1) (1981–)

In [b:Sleep Donation|20454977|Sleep Donation|Karen Russell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393258037l/20454977._SX50_.jpg|32057444], an epidemic of deadly insomnia has hit the USA. The protagonist Trish works for the Slumber Corps, a not for profit organisation managing donations and transfusions of sleep. She uses the story of her sister, who died of insomnia, to convince people to donate their own sleep and that of their children. There are a lot of unsettling pseudo-medical details around the donation process - potential donors are heavily screened for infectious nightmares, which are described as a prion disease of sorts.

This central conceit includes two elements I've come across in other novels: an epidemic of deadly sleep deprivation ([b:Nod|16044493|Nod|Adrian Barnes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1351786251l/16044493._SX50_.jpg|21822383], [b:Black Moon|18050142|Black Moon|Kenneth Calhoun|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1379330979l/18050142._SX50_.jpg|25369239]) and capitalism invading our dreams ([b:Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind|60754889|Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind|Molly McGhee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1682359454l/60754889._SY75_.jpg|95796035], [b:Red Dust, White Snow|62998024|Red Dust, White Snow|Pan Huiting|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679759064l/62998024._SY75_.jpg|98837740], [b:Sweet Dreams|34523623|Sweet Dreams|Tricia Sullivan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497963085l/34523623._SY75_.jpg|55658036]). Both ideas have huge potential, yet all the fiction I've read tackling them struggles to describe the experience of sleep and dreaming in a convincingly visceral manner. [b:Sleep Donation|20454977|Sleep Donation|Karen Russell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393258037l/20454977._SX50_.jpg|32057444]'s corporate and medical details are often creepy, but the nightmares aren't. For example:

"How do we really know it's safe for these people to donate?" I ask Jim and Rudy [her bosses].
"We don't know."
"We can't know."
"That kind of epistemic murk is unavoidable, Edgewater."
"Error, of course, is inevitable in some proportion of cases."
"We should describe the Donor Y tragedy as a freakish exception - which it is."
"But it's unrealistic to expect perfection from any human institution, Trish."
"And from any human, period."
"You know this."
Boy, do I.

If you want a genuinely evocative nightmare experience, I recommend [b:The Unconsoled|40117|The Unconsoled|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1342193138l/40117._SY75_.jpg|6372970] by Kazuo Ishiguro. On the other hand, fiction about sleep and dreams can be using them simply for allegorical purposes. However [b:Sleep Donation|20454977|Sleep Donation|Karen Russell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393258037l/20454977._SX50_.jpg|32057444] is a slight novella that doesn't have the scope to really explore the interesting theme of sleep as a commodity. Although the big dilemma Trish faces is a powerful one, there isn't space to explore its ramifications. The illustrations are fun, though.… (more)

Every summary or review that I saw about this book in the run up to reading it (which, admittedly, wasn't many) cast it as a "Florida is weird, battle of the amusement parks" book. While those elements are certainly present, they are little more than a backdrop to a character-driven novel of grief and confusion, with some Southern Gothic overtones. Russell's writing is lyric and beautiful throughout, often infused with a twinge of dark humor, all of which makes it a pleasure to read.

The story revolves around the Bigtree family, a self-styled "native tribe" who runs the titular alligator park on an island in the last bit of Florida's great swamp. The mother, Hilola, is the star of the show, and when she dies of cancer, both the park and family begin to fall apart. There is something inescapable about the parallel paths of slow degradation. Just as the cancer wasted a once vivacious woman into nothingness, so too does her absence bleed the life and cohesion out of Swamplandia! and the remaining Bigtrees. Chief Sam Bigtree (dad) and his pseudo-intellectual son Kiwi both leave the island in a pitiable and desperate search for income which will save the park. They do so separately, hiding from one another, but are nevertheless walking the same road. Meanwhile daughters Osceola and Ava, left alone on the island, stumble their way into searching for love in all the wrong the wrong places (to paraphrase the '80s). While their searching goes in very different, very strange, directions, they are both casting about for answers and affection without the guidance of their parents.

More than anything else, this book is about loss and lack and the misguided lengths people will go to deal with their grief. While Russell focuses mainly on Ava (who narrates in first person) and Kiwi (whose story is told in 3rd), some sort of decline is as present in all the main characters as it is in the park itself. Notably, if there had been a strong guiding hand in the Bigtree family, each character could have been easily brought back to center. I suppose Hilola was that force, but the reader doesn't really get the chance to see that influence in action.

As much as I enjoyed reading the book, the ending was simply too pat to be satisfying. Without going into spoilers, I'll just say that it was entirely too convenient for the story which had preceded it. I couldn't help but wonder whether the various narrative threads and gone too far in different directions for Russell to swiftly weave them back together. It wouldn't have been an easy task, writing a more complex conclusion, but the entire novel would have been strengthened as a result.… (more)

(I believe the only things resembling spoilers I have put in this review are also in all the explanatory blurbs, and so are presumably not really spoilers. I will also say, as a warning, I suppose . . . I had some emotional upheaval that was not the book's fault due to reading it, and I found it impossible to distance myself from that when writing this review, which certainly makes it rather less subjective as a result.)

In thinking about this book, what to say about it, how to describe it, one of the only things that sticks in my mind is pretty much the only thing that made me finish reading it: my mother pressed it upon me, having not read it herself but heard about it and investigated it.

So I supposed I rather felt like I had to finish it, coupled with the fact that I could not simply abandon Ava and Kiwi and Osceola without finding out where Karen Russell left them.

In a way that made the entry into the story a little harder and a little easier for me - this was a book my mother wanted me to read and had spoken to me about before she became ill and later passed away. Following Ava's feelings on her own mother's time in the hospital and later death were a poignantly strange entry to her mindset that perhaps made it harder for me to countenance her later choices, after sinking into her so well early on.

There were moments in this book that were intriguing, and certainly the premise of the family that live at and run Swamplandia! is in itself intriguing - particularly for someone like me, perhaps. (I have worked at a zoo and a wildlife park; the idea of it being your family's home, life, legacy is fascinating.)

There were far more moments in this book that, all credit to Russell as an author, made me genuinely gut-wrenchingly disgusted or ill. I am not entirely sure if they were supposed to, some of them, but I definitely had those feelings. (One of the reasons I really wanted to put this book down.)

Reading this book, and the 'adventures' of the teenagers in it, left me feeling like I was halfway between a young adult, or juvenile, book - adventures that should end poorly, but never quite go as badly as they could - and an adult book - adventures that can end as badly as it is possible to go.

It felt almost as though Russell didn't know which the story was - which feeling also came into play, for me, in several other of the sub-plots throughout the novel.

I will probably never pick this book up again, and at this point . . . despite Russell's few moments that touched me in the story, I'm not even sure I'm glad I picked it up to begin with.

This is not an uplifting book - that in itself doesn't bother me. Some of the most incredible books I've ever read are horrendously depressing.

Something about this story, however . . . I can't put my finger on it, but it is not a feeling that leaves me in a good place, mentally.

The novel was interesting, at the least, and the writing was not poor - the indecision I sensed is almost certainly a stylistic issue, and might not bother some readers - but it wasn't my cup of tea.… (more)

This book was thoroughly imaginative with fully realized characters and beautiful prose. That said, if there were a way to pluck a story out of my mind to make it as though I had never read it, I'd probably choose this story.

I think part of the problem is the way this was marketed, as though it were a quirky , fun story with a cutesy cover and a side show title. The next thing you know you are reading about a child being raped, a family losing their home and identity aproud old man wasting away in a nursing home- an adolescent boy losing his virginity in a meaningless way a teenage girl being medicated into zombiehood-the lsit goes on. I know that not all books have to have a happy ending and I do not dispute this writer's talent, if she weren't so talaented, I'd not feel so bad.… (more)