Nutgraf

It’s a new year, if you can believe it. Honestly, I feel kind of shorted on 2011. There’s no way that was 12 whole months. 2012 just seems so rich by comparison – and already riddled with such delights as stolen credit cards, recalled automobiles, assorted family and friend-related mishegoss. But things are actually pretty good overall, and I’m just doing some wholesale Winter Whining.

So – as we look towards a couple of months of dark, cold, probably wet and/or icy days, let’s get a little lost in a nice, shiny, new novel that takes place in Florida (Unofficial Motto: The Sun-Damaged Décolletage State).

I selected Swamplandia! because it’s new, looked like fun, got good reviews, and is charmingly inexpensive. What can I say, in these trying economic times, it makes good sense to support the trade paperback industry.

Here’s the review in the New York Times, which mentions that author Karen Russell has “honed her elegant verbal wit and fused it with the nightmare logic that makes Swamplandia! such an eccentric yet revelatory family story.” Despite the fact that Ms. Russell is infuriatingly young and talented, I do like a lot of the adjectives in that sentence, and also a couple of the nouns, so let’s do this.

The novel unfolds in a failing gator-wrestling Everglades theme park, where the 13-year-old protagonist is trying to keep things afloat at the family theme park in the face of a pretty comprehensive list of crises. I’m making it sound wacky, and some of the ingredients are just that, but the review emphasizes that the story and its telling are also haunting and suspenseful.

I’ll ask for comments in mid-February and plan to post something shortly thereafter.

• Would love to know what you’re reading. Please comment below or…
• Join BookGraf on Facebook: Good books? Great company? No effort? Exciting typos? What’s not to like?

As always, any purchases of anything made through links on this site will generate a small donation to the American Cancer Society (via my Cancer is an Asshole campaign).