I adore Karen Russell and was thrilled to receive an ARC for her latest novel, The Antidote.

Love: Russell's lyrical prose, captivating characters, and the mysteries of a sentient scarecrow (!) and time-travel camera (!!).

Didn't love: I think this ARC needs one more round of copyedits before it's ready to be an ARC. The second half of the novel was riddled with continuity errors (e.g. the sheriff facing the wrong direction to get a hat blown into his face) and the chapters start to appear non chronologically (particularly Harp's chapters after the storm). It felt messier as the book went on, to the point where I was reading for errors more than I was enjoying the story.

Definitely not my favorite work of Russell's, but I'll likely recommend with reservations to folks who I think would enjoy some elements of the story.

This uses the dust bowl element perfectly, and enjoyed getting to know the characters in this world. The plot had that element that I was looking for and had that historical fiction novel. Karen Russell wrote this perfectly and was invested in what was going on. I hope to read more from Karen Russell and it was wonderfully done.

I am so excited to share how remarkable "The Antidote" is. Is it historical fiction? Yes. Is it horror? Absolutely. Is it impossible to put down? Just look at the bags under my eyes.

The novel opens on Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, the day when a tsunami of dust rolled over the Great Plains, nearly smothering the town of Uz, Nebraska, suffocating people and adding to the crisis of dust pneumonia. Karen Russell looks at this phenomena using five set of eyes: a prairie witch known as the Antidote, whose body serves as a receptacle for the nightmares and dreams of the local populace; a Black New Deal photographer assigned to photograph the dust's devastation, but whose camera reveals the land in the past and the future; a farmer whose Polish family recreates the injustices done to them in Europe on the Nebraska prairie; his niece, daughter of a murdered mother; and a sentient scarecrow. Every one of these voices is so fully realized that they could spark their own book.

"The Antidote" constantly surprises and excites. Russell is wonderful to read and hard to leave behind once you've turned the last page. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for a digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

Karen Russell the author of Swamplandia! is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and MacArthur recipient.
The Antidote is a swirling story of the Dust Bowl and 5 characters who reside in dying town Uz, Nebraska during the Great Depression.
It's Black Sunday, and a raging dust storm falls upon Uz, unearthing the violent secrets of it's Beginnings.

We soon learn the sad tales of the characters and what brought them to the dead-end town of Utz including the Prairie Witch, the farmer, a New Deal photographer with a magical camera and a sparky basketball teen star. Russell's novel is a work of art as she includes themes of generational trauma and the readiness to forget what transpired before. The story of the Antidote is a harbinger for the future tying in climate change and our own foretold demise.
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