SWAMPLANDIA! (Karen Russell) - March 27/11

This horrible, utterly boring book started out well enough, but eventually becomes as interminable a read as I can easily imagine. The latter half, which is devoted primarily to Ava's astoundingly dull trip through the swamps of Florida, seems to have been written in a stream-of-consciousness style by Russell, which ensures that it's chock full of long, absurdly descriptive passages that are sure to frustrate and infuriate most readers. There are a few fairly decent stretches here - ie the flashback into the death of a Depression-era figure who is memorably carried off by buzzards - but really, this is exactly the kind of book I dread encountering. (And it doesn't surprise me that it's been compared to Conrad, as the swamp stuff is just as unreadable and obnoxious as anything in Heart of Darkness.) * out of ****