Karen Russell's ‘The Antidote' is a dazzlingly original American epic
In 2011, Karen Russell cast a spell over readers with her uncanny debut novel, 'Swamplandia!' She wasn't kidding about that exclamation point. The story involves a plucky 13-year-old girl determined to revive her family's alligator park.
'Swamplandia!' went on to become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. That year, Russell's novel was up against an unfinished manuscript by an author who'd died in 2008 and a revised version of a novella published in the Paris Review almost a decade earlier. Historically speaking, being above ground with a new, finished novel has been a great advantage when it comes to winning a Pulitzer. But, alas, that year, in its inscrutable wisdom, the Pulitzer board decided not to give a prize for fiction.
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