I love Karen Russell’s fiction. I did not love her latest novel. This puts me at odds with my colleagues who, according to LitHub (and its Book Review aggregator), overwhelmingly praised The Antidote.* 

I can understand the critical appeal. It’s an epic novel set during the Dust Bowl of the 20s, dealing with weighty issues, notably the erasure of Native American history. There are echoes of The Wizard of Oz and the story of Job (the town where the novel is set, “Uz”, is both a play on “Oz” and the name of Job’s village). The fabulist elements are genuinely striking. A prairie witch that can absorb and secure a person’s memory (like a Vault) and a camera that takes pictures of the past and future.** The characters are memorable. Vivid. Well drawn. Sympathetic. I was never not invested in the narrative.

But. There’s too much going on. We have an integrated, all-girl basketball team. We have a serial killer—or, at least, the sheriff pretending there’s a serial killer to palm off the brutal murders of several women. We have an extended series of flashbacks devoted to the poor treatment of unwed teenagers, sent to homes where they are forced to hand over their child. We have Polish wheat farmer Harp, whose niece is Dell, struggling to understand why his farm has been protected from the dust and why he still has a crop.

As I say in my piece for Locus (due in May), I like shaggy novels where the narrative threads are frayed and barely knot together. But here, it felt like Russell had too much to say, stuff about gender and race and climate and memory and identity, and wasn’t willing to pare any of it back.

I’m unsure what to make of Russell not giving the Pawnee a voice. They are ever present, the victims of American colonialism perpetrated by Polish immigrants escaping German oppression. But aside from one teenage basketball player, there are no Pawnee characters. It’s only upon finishing the novel that we get a powerful short essay from James Riding In about the generational trauma inflicted on the Pawnee by the US Government. It’s possible that Russell didn’t feel comfortable writing from a Pawnee perspective. More likely, it would have undermined the novel’s theme—indigenous erasure—if one of the main characters was a member of the Pawnee. But I can’t help but feel that Russell is perpetuating the very issue she’s trying to highlight by elliding the Pawnee and their culture from the narrative.

I’d still recommend The Antidote, but maybe lower your expectations.

*There’s only one outright “pan” from Laura Miller from Slate. Sandra Newman was also not a big fan. I liked it more than both Miller and Newman, but not nearly as much as the rest of my colleagues.

**And a sentient scarecrow.