The novel captures an era of American history that I knew nothing about: the story is nestled between two major climate events—the Black Sunday Dust Storm and the Republican River Flood. The book is filled with an eclectic cast of characters: a prairie witch called the Antidote, who can act as a vault for people's memories, which they can later debit; Harp Oletsky (a Polish farmer) and his defiant but lovable niece, Asphodel, who signs up to become the Antidote’s apprentice; Cleo Allfrey, a photographer who stumbles upon a camera that can take quantum pictures—pictures that reveal the past and future; a sentient scarecrow; a vengeful cat; and a twisted sheriff. In the aftermath of the Dust Bowl, the photographs Cleo captures and the memories stored in the vaults begin to uncover dark secrets not just about present-day events, but also about how the town was founded and the hidden truths behind its establishment—secrets the community is ill-prepared to face. This mounting tension ignites the action that drives the story forward. While the book excels at painting vivid, evocative portraits of the Dust Bowl, the dust storms, and the sweeping prairies, it truly shines in weaving together its eclectic cast of characters, culminating in a breathtaking, hopeful finale.

The book explores the heavy burden of memories, showing how, in their quest for self-preservation, people may choose to bury their pasts—only to have those dark, unresolved memories inevitably resurface and haunt them. It also explores how settlers/colonizers drove Native Indians from their lands through treachery, violence, and fraud, and coerced them into assimilation by stripping them of their Indian roots. The book shows how everything is connected: the ripple effects of drought-like conditions and intense soil erosion stem from the fact that Native Americans, who knew how to care for the land, were driven out. It explores the settler mentality, showing how seemingly "small" prejudices and rumors can lead to far-reaching consequences.

There are also parallel threads about the Antidote’s grief over having her son stolen at a school for “unwed mothers”, Asphodel finding hope and community in basketball amidst the death of her mother, Cleo finding her own voice in her photography—especially as a Black woman during a time when racial segregation was still rampant, even in integrated communities—and Harp making sense of his fortune (his land being unscathed) while his neighbors reel from the crushing damages of the Dust Bowl. The novel also explores the fickleness of the justice system, mob mentality, and the hypocrisy of “religious people.” The book manages to tackle all these seemingly disparate threads with aplomb.

The book also includes an author’s note and historical context at the end, shedding light on the real people and events that inspired the narrative—an insight I found incredibly valuable. I absolutely loved this book, and it will undoubtedly be one of my favorites of the year.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author (Karen Russell), and the publisher (Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf) for an advanced copy. Thoughts and review are completely my own.

(Will be sharing to my Instagram closer to the publishing date)

This book opens in a small town in Nebraska called Uz on Black Sunday as a huge dust storm covers the town and its inhabitants. The Great Depression and the drought are driving residents away along with something else. The Antidote follows a cast of characters including a "prairie witch" who can use her body as a "vault" to hold secrets and memories, a Polish farmer whose wheat fields are inexplicably growing while everyone else's are failing, the farmer's niece and apprentice to the witch and a New Deal photographer. These characters deal with hardship, grief, historical wrongs, environmental catastrophes, and the town sheriff in this wide ranging book.

This book had a great cover and interesting premise with the magical realism mixed with historical backdrop. My previous experience with this author was less than favorable as I did not care for her collection of short stories but I was willing to give another chance. In The Antidote, I thought she wrote interesting characters but this book was way too long. It felt like a bunch of short stories loosely tied together and it took a long time to get going. I rarely give up on books but I was really close on this one as the book doesn't really get moving until over 2/3 of the way through. Your patience is rewarded with a somewhat confusing climax involving some things that aren't well explained. On the whole, I enjoyed the book but it tested my patience and wasn't always clear how the magical realism aspect of things worked.

Swamplandia, the year it was released, got robbed of the Pulitzer. It should have won. This book, in my opinion, should also be in the running to win her a prize.

Something of a mixed bag, this one. Firstly, it’s likely to appeal more if you’re a fan of magical realism. I’m not. So I struggled with magic cameras, and witches with the ability to record and drain memories, and inspirited scarecrows, and more. And then there’s the worthiness angle, the important conversation about displacement and Native Americans and despoliation of the land. Serious stuff, but verging on the didactic here, I thought. On the other hand, the writing is often bright and vivid, with lots of nice touches.
Does it add up to an integrated whole? Not really. It’s a long book with high ambitions that requires more suspension of disbelief - and patience - than most. I applaud the ambitiousness but am not sure it has resulted in success.

So much is included in this historical fiction/magical realism novel that I felt overwhelmed and in awe. The author includes topics like government lies, a home for unwed mothers, immigration, bad farming practices, removing the Native Peoples from their homes, murder, basketball, racism, a New Deal photography project, epic weather conditions, and a wonderful invention called “prairie witches” who would listen to and carry your emotional burdens for you. Her descriptions of the winds that blew incessantly had me itching my own eyes in sympathy. She peopled her story with likable, flawed, caring characters that are so perfect for the time and place.

Thanks to NetGalley and Alfred A Knopf Publishing for the ARC to read and review.

Thank you for the opportunity to review "The Antidote" by Karen Russell. Russell has been a favorite short story author for a while now and I'm appreciative of her work on this latest release. "The Antidote" is a solid work and I enjoyed most of it very much. Definitely will recommend to others and will keep reading Russell in the future.

was hooked by the bookjacket copy immediately. This novel sounded ambitious by the description, alone, and it was. But Russel nailed it – this book with its fantastical, magical, historical, environmental, and social themes.

Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a Dust Bowl-era story containing ‘prairie witches’ who serve as ‘memory vaults’ for human emotion? Or a teenaged female basketball player damaged by loss, living with her lonely uncle? Or a female Black photographer hired to document the sadness playing out in the dust-ravaged Midwest by the Resettlement Administration? And a magical camera!

And my goodness – the aspect the bookjacket doesn’t tell you: there’s a cat who ends up playing a very pivotal role in this climax of this story (with a hilarious sense of humor). And the scarecrow. Delightful.

Told in multiple first-person voices, this novel is filled with beautiful writing and thought-provoking one-liners.

A stupid man can still be a savant at torture.

The dust had another lesson to teach me: so long as you’re still drawing breath, there’s always more to lose.

‘You should be grateful’ is a sentence that the powerful wield like a cudgel.

It’s rarely the truth itself that people can’t accept. It’s how they feel about it.

But that is a sight that will never leave me. The waves of earth crashing over the prairie. The sky exhaling her birds.

The windmills were swinging sunset around and around. Tin blue and fiery pinks and golds.

This book tackles some of the stark realities of the founding of our country (as well as its mistreatment of women), and includes many harrowing scenes depicted with great sensitivity. And while it begs many questions about property ownership, colonial culpability, guilt, and the lies we tell ourselves – it does paint hope for a different future. The best part is that, unlike so many other novels in this era, Russell doesn’t come across as sermonizing.

This wasn’t a perfect book. Some might find it too ambitious, or too slow (something I don’t mind, if I’m transported and learning something new, and if the language is lovely). What stopped this from being a five-star read was the rushed decision of all the characters that led to the pivotal scene. I couldn’t one-hundred-percent buy their sudden convictions, though I was happy to go along with them because of the hubbub that was caused.

In the end, this is a book about the importance of our life stories – the emotions, lies, truths, and difficulties within them – the very things that make us imperfect beings. But beings who are capable of change. And, it is, of course, this is a book about family.

The Antidote was a difficult read, slow for me to get into and I could not decide between 3 and 4 stars. I landed on 3 stars because while I felt the writing was beautiful, the story bit off more than it could chew. It was far longer than it needed to be and tried to tackle too many big ideas; at times it got too preachy and told too many stories.

The story switches from the point of view of several major characters: Harp Oletsky, an aging bachelor farmer; Cleo, a Black female government photographer who discovers a quantum camera that can capture the past and future; Dell, a fierce basketball player with a heart of gold; and the Prairie Witch, a woman whose magic is banking deposits of bad memories people would rather forget for their peace of mind.

For such a long story I thought the characters could have used more development into their backstory and motivations. I liked Dell and the Prarie Witch the best, and I found the quantum camera fascinating. I found it hard to believe that Harp hadn't had any romantic feelings or sexual attraction to anyone until fraternizing with a woman in his 60s (I think he is, anyway), even though the concept of asexuality was not known at that time.

The Prairie Witches ended up being a conceit for white guilt over stealing tribal lands. It showed more complexity than I thought it would, going deep into the history of Polish settlers fleeing persecution and the difficulty of blame assignment and restitution in a world of refugees of different degrees.

I thought it did a good job of sensitively telling the trauma and pain of Indians without telling their stories for them; the point of view was on the white settlers and the effects of generational trauma on topics like climate change and family life. But it felt more cerebral in the lesson than I usually like.

Ultimately I didn't connect enough with the characters and it felt a bit like attending a lecture that went on too long. I haven't read Karen Russell before this though so fans of her writing will find much to appreciate here. A lot of this was impressive but I wasn't the right audience. I'm surprised at this because I loved the concept of a weird Western, prairie witches, revenge against white settlers and high-concept environmental fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The Antidote has all the ingredients I usually love: a Dust Bowl setting, historical fiction, and a dose of magical realism. But despite the promising premise, I couldn’t connect with it. The constant POV shifts made it hard to stay invested, just as I’d get intrigued by one character’s story, it would jump to another. The pacing felt slow, and while the prairie witch and the scarecrow had so much potential, I found myself struggling to care.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC—I can see how this might work for die-hard Russell fans, but it wasn’t for me.

This Dust Bowl-era novel is another Karen Russell blockbuster. She's created a world so fully-developed, with characteristic elements of magical realism that are so real that I had to google to make sure parts of it were, indeed, invented. The story is mainly told through four narrators, with another two that appear here and there to push the action forward or provide the reader a moment of reflection.

Russell's characters are, once again, fresh and new -- and she writes equally well from all points of view. There are classic novels set during this time, but somehow Russell's voice brings us farther inside the experience than we've been before.

I could write so much about this book, but I recommend just picking it up and beginning. But I will say that we don't need film adaptations of Karen Russell's work because she is so visual and so immersive with her storytelling that it played out -- in this reader's mind's eye at least -- like the very best a film can offer.

Read this book.

Set in 1930s Nebraska, featuring a witch who can take and store people's memories, a teenage girl whose mother was murdered and who is a fierce basketball player, her uncle, a non-descript farmer whose farm shows signs of a miracle, a Black photographer employed by the government who stumbles across a magical camera, and a seemingly sentient scarecrow. There are too many things going on and too many different kinds of magic. I love Karen Russell's short stories but felt like this novel just didn't mesh.

Karen Russell’s THE ANTIDOTE is historical fiction, focusing on a small dust bowl Nebraskan town during the Great Depression, with a very strong shot of magical realism mixed in. This recipe sounds delicious and right up my alley. Unfortunately, I had a difficult time getting into this novel and finally gave up at the 30% mark.

Just as I’d get interested in the prairie witch’s really compelling story, the point of view would shift. Then I’d get invested in the mind of a basketball playing daughter of a murdered woman - and the story of the man who confessed to killing her - and the POV switches to her uncle.

I’m sure if I kept reading, I’d fall in love with the scarecrow because … hello, it’s a scarecrow. But I just couldn’t get there.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher Knoph for the opportunity to read an advance digital copy of THE ANTIDOTE in exchange for my honest feedback. I may come back to this one in the future because I do feel it has tons of potential.

I have read Russel (Pulitzer nominated) before and jumped at the chance to read and review The Antidote. Set in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s Nebraska, five characters are drawn together in the dying town of Uz after the dust storm of Black Sunday. A first generation Polish bachelor farmer, his fierce basketball star niece, a Black New Deal photographer, a scarecrow, and a Prairie Witch/Vault; with occasional representation from a cat. Sounds bizarre, but it works in this storyline. The witch/vault concept is intriguing and thought provoking; people pay the vault to listen to listen to and bank their memories, good or bad, and they have ability to leave the memory or withdraw it later. This sounds wonderful at first, but think about the intended and unintended consequences, is it? Very good story line and resolutions, well written dialog and character development, and well researched factual background. Make sure to read the Land Lost Acknowledgement and Author’s Note in the back of the book.

Well researched and well written this historical fantasy was not for me. I never quite engaged with the characters or the town of UZ Nebraska. Set in the 1930's during the catastrophic dust storm Black Sunday and the Depression the times are grim. The author follows the lives of five characters, the most interesting being the Prairie Witch one of many women who make their living storing secrets and memories of towns people around the country. The pace of The Antidote felt slow and somber, I struggled to finish, but for fans of Karen Russell this could be a winner.
Many Thanks to Netgalley for an Advanced copy to read and review.

This was a thinker, it needs to be read slow and purposefully because there is a lot of subtext if you choose to read it that way. The characters were well written, their stories unfolding at the right pace. The anthropomorphizing of the cat and the scarecrow were well done.

The Antidote was a great book to finish off 2024. It defies classification: it is both historical fiction and fantasy. It is political commentary, sweeping saga, intimate personal stories. It is devastating and hopeful, tense but not without humor. It's set in one of the most notable times of this country's history but addresses concerns that span the centuries. And it's set in a fictional small town in Nebraska, but it's packed with real places, the real history of the state, and real photographs taken by those sent to record that time.
"Black Sunday began as a gash in the western sky, growing wider and wider and spilling down dirt instead of blood. Sometimes I imagine the glee of those journalists in the New York City papers - typing up the story of our worst day in their fancy language. Adjusting the margins and pushing our tragedy into a skinny column, just like old Marvin at the funeral home shoving a tall corpse into a tight suit."
"Imagine every ghost rising up to hurl their cemetery earth at the living. That was the sound we heard last Sunday afternoon. At 3:00 p.m the sun was murdered in cold blood, in full view of every woman and child. The sun sank into black cloud. Buried alive, at a shocking altitude, but the duster to end all dusters."
We get the story primarily from The Prairie Witch, Asphodel Oletsky, Harp Oletsky, and Cleo Allfrey whose names will change as chapter headings as the books progresses. But we also get chapters from the points of view of a cat and a scarecrow, chapters that are The Antidote's history, and one of Harp's "deposits." In less skilled hands, all of this shifting could be confusing; but Russell skillfully blends all of these points of view at the same time she is moving the story forward while giving us the backstory of the land and the people. The characters are fully realized, their travails their own but their concerns and hopes universal. While the full story is slow to develop, it's never drags and it's well worth the time spent when everything comes to a conclusion with a second cataclysmic (and real) event.
"The Republican River became a four-mile-wide whitewater monster, thrashing its long tail from eastern Colorado to Oxford, Nebraska. Twenty-four inches of rain fell in twenty-four house! Bridges split and splintered apart. Hundreds of miles of road got washed out. The river poured forward with enough force to carry cars and rooftops. Walls floated away. Friends became cadavers in outfits we recognized, floating beside tractors and drowned cattle. Bodies were seen riding on the crest through the middle of towns, their shy faces staring underwater even as we screamed their names."
At a time when I was really struggling to focus on any book, this one grabbed me and kept me reading. The concepts, the history, the characters, the writing, the pacing, the creativity all worked to make this book that will stay with me a long time. As much as it is set in the past, it is filled with lessons to be learned, not the least of which are to see how history is repeating itself and how human nature remains unchanged. Russell leaves us with hope - we see that there is an opportunity to learn from the past and to change our future. If only we will listen.

One final note, if you read this book, make sure you read the Land Lost Acknowledgment and the Author's Note at the end.

This is a beautifully written historical/magical realism novel set in the 1930's during the Dust Bowl and Depression. Told primarily from four points of view, the main characters include a lonely older bachelor farmer, his orphaned teenage niece, a Black WPA photographer, and a prairie witch, the Antidote, who is able to absorb her customers' memories so they can forget them. A few chapters are in the voice of a scarecrow and a cat, who become surprisingly important. The setting of rural Nebraska in the 30's is a major character on its own, and readers will become immersed in the hardships of the state and its people. As I read, I kept encountering words to hold on to: "Remembering someone you've lost can feel like drinking mist." "People string catgut over a hole and send music pouring into the atmosphere. Maybe I can restring myself, and learn how to make music from my hollow place."

I loved the concept of this book from the time that I heard it. I’m thrilled to say my instincts were correct. This book was beautifully written, intriguing, has wonderful characters, and a slower but well-paced plot. Overall, this was a joy to read.

The rich historical setting is the main attraction here. Lots of research obviously went into its writing, and it pays off. The novel follows several different characters and their stories, some of which are not as compelling as others, and while they do all come together in the end, it isn't as satisfying as it should be. The fantastical elements, usually Russell's strength, sometimes feel forced and out of place. Fans of historical fiction will enjoy this more than fans of Russell's creepier work.

It's almost impossible to write a synopsis of Karen Russell's "The Antidote" in just a few sentences, there's just so much going on. I'd rather write about the emotional and mind-blowing aspect of this extraordinary novel of small town Nebraska during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930's.
Replete with magical realism, and mystical characters–including a witch that can "bank" your memories, an observant and meddling scarecrow, a photographer whose images are other-worldly or not what they seem, and a cat who narrates a small portion of the story. These, and other characters recount a story both historical and fantastical. One that by the time it was finished, it made me feel completely wrung out. It's a rare and talented writer who has that ability.
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the early digital copy of this incredible book!