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Feb. 6th, 2013 12:57 pmSwamplandia!, Karen Russell.
This looked good enough to buy used, and I was sort of enjoying meeting the characters, though feeling wary. Then I came to Goodreads to add it and read a bunch of bad reviews (from people who seem to dislike the same things I do) and started to get discouraged. I generally hate magical realism and that genre about families of freaks who don't fit into the Real World (ooh, metaphor! do we not ALL feel like freaks??). So I ended up skimming it and since I was insatiably curious about the Bad Thing on page 260 that oriana mentions in her review (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/125002887), I read that part and on to the end. And I'm glad I didn't spend any more time than that on this book, because she's right, the way the Bad Thing was handled was just strange and wrong, and the whole book is a hot mess.
This looked good enough to buy used, and I was sort of enjoying meeting the characters, though feeling wary. Then I came to Goodreads to add it and read a bunch of bad reviews (from people who seem to dislike the same things I do) and started to get discouraged. I generally hate magical realism and that genre about families of freaks who don't fit into the Real World (ooh, metaphor! do we not ALL feel like freaks??). So I ended up skimming it and since I was insatiably curious about the Bad Thing on page 260 that oriana mentions in her review (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/125002887), I read that part and on to the end. And I'm glad I didn't spend any more time than that on this book, because she's right, the way the Bad Thing was handled was just strange and wrong, and the whole book is a hot mess.
