The Antidote
Karen Russell
£18.99
Mr B's review
From Pulitzer Prize finalist, Karen Russell, comes this astonishing new novel set in 1930s Dust Bowl America, in the fictional town of Uz. Here we follow five characters including a prairie witch, a Polish farmer, a New Deal photographer with a one-of-a-kind camera, an orphaned basketball player, and a scarecrow.
At the centre of the novel is the Antidote, otherwise known as a ‘prairie witch’ who acts as a vault for people’s memories. Be it a memory that’s held someone back in life, unable to move on, or a memory they wish to cherish and never forget and be able to come back to at some point; they can ‘bank’ it with the Antidote, and redeem it at a later date. But when the Black Sunday dust storm sweeps across the Nebraskan prairie, the Antidote finds she’s drawing a blank – all of the townsfolk’s memories have vanished, and so has her livelihood.
As these five characters’ lives – their histories and potential futures – converge, they are forced to reckon with their own town’s violent past, everything that they and their ancestors have so easily forgotten, leading them to become the very thing they once despised and fled themselves. Will they be able to make a different future for themselves, and this land so many once called home?
You could argue Karen Russell has bitten off a little more than she could chew here – it’s a kaleidoscopic and ambitious novel, but I found so much to admire and love here. Interspersed with real photographs of the time, and told with Russell’s own signature humour and unique ideas, I was left in awe of how this was nothing like anything I’d read before. A strong contender for awards this year, I’m sure. – Emma
Description
‘Powerful’ Financial Times
‘A pure dust storm of utter genius’ DAISY JOHNSON
‘As profound as it is wonderfully strange’ LAUREN GROFF
What do we choose to remember and what do we allow ourselves to forget?
Visit the Antidote of Uz – a prairie witch who can keep your memories safe. Speak into her emerald-green earhorn, and your secrets, your shames, your private joys, will leave your mind and enter hers.
Until the Black Sunday storm, which flattens wheatfields, buries houses and vaporizes every memory stored inside the Antidote. She wakes up empty – as bankrupt as America. If her customers ever discover the truth, her life will be in danger.
To the Antidote’s surprising defence comes Asphodel – young tearaway, girls’ basketball captain and aspiring prairie witch – who won’t take no for an answer. Along with her Polish wheat-farmer uncle and a New Deal photographer with an enchanted camera, they must confront what has cursed this town: its land on the brink of ruin and its people on the edge of starvation. Apart, they run from the memories that have brought them here. Together, they face down the storm coming their way.
The Antidote is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting – the wilful omissions passed down from generation to generation. This gripping Dust Bowl epic echoes with urgent warnings for our own time, daring us to imagine what might have been – and what still could be.
‘Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude’ KAVEH AKBAR
‘Karen Russell is one in a million’ New York Times
‘This novel swept me up and carried me away’ TOMMY ORANGE
Publisher Review
Russell gets better and better with every word, she is a pure dust storm of utter genius — DAISY JOHNSON, author of Everything Under Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange — LAUREN GROFF, author of Matrix It’s magic, a book doing this big work and also making it propulsive, eminently readable. Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude — KAVEH AKBAR, author of Martyr! This novel swept me up and carried me away, even while somehow burying me, and digging up something about the story of [America] I didn’t know I needed to know — TOMMY ORANGE, author of Wandering Stars Here in The Antidote, Karen Russel has summoned her singular brand of alchemy and created an epic of heart and devastation, community and laughter, death and life. A book that has it all. An absolute wonder — NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars Karen Russell’s novel is generous, profound, and will stay with me for a long time — KELLY LINK, author of Get in Trouble Brilliant… [Russell] writes like nobody else on the planet — TEA OBREHT, author of The Tiger’s Wife A singular, haunting vision that fearlessly excavates the past and challenges the reader to face the future head-on. A storytelling tour de force * Kirkus (starred review) * Spellbinding… an inspired and unforgettable fusion of the gritty and the fantastic * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * Russell is truly one of the greatest writers of our time… every page is pocked with joy, beauty, wildness and the perfect wisdom of mystery — RIVKA GALCHEN, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch
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