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The Antidote
‘Karen Russell is one in a million’ New York Times
From the Pulitzer-shortlisted author, an astounding novel about magic, memory and land, set in America’s Dust Bowl.
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 uncle, a Polish wheat farmer, 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.
'This novel swept me up and carried me away, even while somehow burying me, and digging up something about the story of this country I didn’t know I needed to know' Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars
‘Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude’ Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
From the Pulitzer-shortlisted author, an astounding novel about magic, memory and land, set in America’s Dust Bowl.
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 uncle, a Polish wheat farmer, 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.
'This novel swept me up and carried me away, even while somehow burying me, and digging up something about the story of this country I didn’t know I needed to know' Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars
‘Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude’ Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
400 pages, Hardcover
First published March 11, 2025
3622 people are currently reading
74631 people want to read
About the author
Karen Russell
57 books3,442 followersKaren Russell graduated from Columbia University's MFA program in 2006. Her stories have been featured in The Best American Short Stories, Conjunctions, Granta, The New Yorker, Oxford American, and Zoetrope. Her first book of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was published in September 2006. In November 2009, she was named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree. In June 2010, she was named a New Yorker "20 Under 40" honoree. Her first novel, Swamplandia!, was published in February 2011.
She lives in Washington Heights, New York.
She lives in Washington Heights, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,331 reviews
October 14, 2024
Excuse me while I walk around for the next several months running into doorframes thinking about this book. Karen Russell is an extraordinary writer, and this novel is worth the wait. I have no idea how she pulled off this alchemy, but she somehow did: she not only managed to write a gorgeous book about the Dust Bowl, a string of brutal murders, a mysterious scarecrow, quantum photographs, basketball, and prairie witches who store your memories, but she also made it say something important about social justice, collective memory, and who exactly tells the story of “history.” I felt every emotion while reading this book. I wanted to start it again as soon as I finished it. If it isn’t on your TBR, add it immediately—I’m calling it now that this book will see major awards traction in 2025. Russell’s previous (and previously only) novel was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this one followed in that trajectory as well.
December 16, 2025
In 2011, Karen Russell cast a spell over readers with her uncanny debut novel, “Swamplandia!” She wasn’t kidding about that exclamation point. The story involves a plucky 13-year-old girl determined to revive her family’s alligator park.
“Swamplandia!” went on to become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. That year, Russell’s novel was up against an unfinished manuscript by an author who’d died in 2008 and a revised version of a novella published in the Paris Review almost a decade earlier. Historically speaking, being above ground with a new, finished novel has been a great advantage when it comes to winning a Pulitzer. But, alas, that year, in its inscrutable wisdom, the Pulitzer board decided not to give a prize for fiction.
What might have been?
The question of possibilities both forgotten and denied snakes through Russell’s second novel, a tempest of a tale called “The Antidote.” Her signature conceits gather again in these pages — a determined girl, a tincture of wizardry, a slash of violence — but this story is dazzlingly original and ambitious. Hovering in the atmosphere somewhere between Colson Whitehead’s “Underground Railroad” and Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,” “The Antidote” is a historical novel pumped full of just enough magic to make it rise without bursting the bubble of our credulity.
It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down,
We thought it was our judgment, we thought it was our doom.
So sang Woody Guthrie about the cataclysmal dust storm that struck on April 14, 1935. On Black Sunday, as the disaster has since been known, a blizzard of dirt churned across America’s desiccated plains, destroying farms, burying homes and plunging the nation further into economic depression.
“The Antidote” opens in the howling wind of that Black Sunday. One of the book’s narrators, Antonina, is locked in a jail cell in a Nebraska town called Uz. You don’t need to catch the allusion to Job’s homeland to know this is a place being severely tested. “I woke up,” Antonina says, “to a sound like a freight train tunneling through me. An earsplitting howl that seemed to shake the stone walls. My body trembled like a husk on the cot. My fingers clawed into the mattress. For those early moments in the dark I was nothing but the fear of....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
“Swamplandia!” went on to become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. That year, Russell’s novel was up against an unfinished manuscript by an author who’d died in 2008 and a revised version of a novella published in the Paris Review almost a decade earlier. Historically speaking, being above ground with a new, finished novel has been a great advantage when it comes to winning a Pulitzer. But, alas, that year, in its inscrutable wisdom, the Pulitzer board decided not to give a prize for fiction.
What might have been?
The question of possibilities both forgotten and denied snakes through Russell’s second novel, a tempest of a tale called “The Antidote.” Her signature conceits gather again in these pages — a determined girl, a tincture of wizardry, a slash of violence — but this story is dazzlingly original and ambitious. Hovering in the atmosphere somewhere between Colson Whitehead’s “Underground Railroad” and Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,” “The Antidote” is a historical novel pumped full of just enough magic to make it rise without bursting the bubble of our credulity.
It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down,
We thought it was our judgment, we thought it was our doom.
So sang Woody Guthrie about the cataclysmal dust storm that struck on April 14, 1935. On Black Sunday, as the disaster has since been known, a blizzard of dirt churned across America’s desiccated plains, destroying farms, burying homes and plunging the nation further into economic depression.
“The Antidote” opens in the howling wind of that Black Sunday. One of the book’s narrators, Antonina, is locked in a jail cell in a Nebraska town called Uz. You don’t need to catch the allusion to Job’s homeland to know this is a place being severely tested. “I woke up,” Antonina says, “to a sound like a freight train tunneling through me. An earsplitting howl that seemed to shake the stone walls. My body trembled like a husk on the cot. My fingers clawed into the mattress. For those early moments in the dark I was nothing but the fear of....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
July 9, 2025
“There is no way to tell the truth without first revealing ourselves as liars.”
The Antidote is simply extraordinary. Propulsive. Timely and urgent. I finished it on the eve of the most consequential election of my lifetime, and by the time I finished, I was shaking and crying and cheering because of its powerful warnings and hopeful vision for the times we live in now. It’s an incredible, must-read book.
It opens in the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska, during the Dust Bowl drought. Anyone who has read Karan Russell knows that her novels are bound to have an overlay of fantastical realism, and this one is no exception. The book is filled with the perils and promises that face us and how our memories are the key to understanding where we came from and where we’re going.
The Antidote follows five characters, the most compelling of whom is the Prairie Witch aka the Vault, whose body acts like a bank vault for neighbors to deposit their most heinous memories. The result is a town of spellbound amnesiacs who have holes inside them where their memories once resided. There’s also a Polish wheat farmer who is the sole person whose farm has not been destroyed by the dust storm (not unlike the main character Kate Southwood’s excellent Falling to Earth). His orphaned niece is a basketball star and an apprentice to the Prairie Witch. Finally, we meet a scarecrow infused with human thought and a New Deal photographer whose camera, purchased at a pawn shop, sees things that are not there yet and things hidden in the town’s shameful history.
Within these pages, we discover stories of a murdered woman and a monstrous sheriff, an onerous Home for Unwed Mothers that will move even the hardest hearts, the injustice dealt to the Pawnee Indians and the cult behavior of a town that wants to sweep all this under the rug. At the same time, the magical camera reveals the myriad possibilities of what could happen if we trust our greater angels and trust the land and nature to teach us how to see it.
Ultimately, this hopeful book focuses mainly on memory – memory lost, memory revealed, and new memories waiting to be created. The novel is an achingly profound and transformative book. I owe a deep debt to Knopf and NetGalley for enabling me to be an early reader of a novel that will surely take its place as one of my top books of 2025.
The Antidote is simply extraordinary. Propulsive. Timely and urgent. I finished it on the eve of the most consequential election of my lifetime, and by the time I finished, I was shaking and crying and cheering because of its powerful warnings and hopeful vision for the times we live in now. It’s an incredible, must-read book.
It opens in the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska, during the Dust Bowl drought. Anyone who has read Karan Russell knows that her novels are bound to have an overlay of fantastical realism, and this one is no exception. The book is filled with the perils and promises that face us and how our memories are the key to understanding where we came from and where we’re going.
The Antidote follows five characters, the most compelling of whom is the Prairie Witch aka the Vault, whose body acts like a bank vault for neighbors to deposit their most heinous memories. The result is a town of spellbound amnesiacs who have holes inside them where their memories once resided. There’s also a Polish wheat farmer who is the sole person whose farm has not been destroyed by the dust storm (not unlike the main character Kate Southwood’s excellent Falling to Earth). His orphaned niece is a basketball star and an apprentice to the Prairie Witch. Finally, we meet a scarecrow infused with human thought and a New Deal photographer whose camera, purchased at a pawn shop, sees things that are not there yet and things hidden in the town’s shameful history.
Within these pages, we discover stories of a murdered woman and a monstrous sheriff, an onerous Home for Unwed Mothers that will move even the hardest hearts, the injustice dealt to the Pawnee Indians and the cult behavior of a town that wants to sweep all this under the rug. At the same time, the magical camera reveals the myriad possibilities of what could happen if we trust our greater angels and trust the land and nature to teach us how to see it.
Ultimately, this hopeful book focuses mainly on memory – memory lost, memory revealed, and new memories waiting to be created. The novel is an achingly profound and transformative book. I owe a deep debt to Knopf and NetGalley for enabling me to be an early reader of a novel that will surely take its place as one of my top books of 2025.
April 17, 2025
This was such a frustrating read because there is a powerful story buried somewhere in here but it gets lost in the noise. The plot is meandering at best; huge moments (like the murder of Dell’s mother!) just fade into the background, never to be resolved or even acknowledged again. I kept waiting for things to connect, and they never really did. Instead, we get long stretches about Dell’s basketball career while the actual emotional and historical heart of the story—violence against Native communities—happens entirely off-page.
And don’t get me started on the characters. I wanted to believe in them, but they just didn’t feel real. Dell, Harp, Cleo, they all speak and act like modern-day activists plopped into 1930s Nebraska. Dell is out and proud on an integrated basketball team, Cleo is a Black woman traveling freely as a photographer without a hint of struggle or cultural specificity, and everyone is having these very modern reckonings with racism and colonialism without ever seeming to deal with the harsh material realities of the time. I’m all for revisionist history when it’s clear that’s what the author is doing, but this book seems to want the weight of realism while constantly sidestepping what that actually requires.
I do think Russell can write, there are moments of insight and really lovely prose. But overall, this just didn’t land for me. It wants to be both a political reckoning and a fable, and in trying to be both, it ends up doing neither particularly well.
And don’t get me started on the characters. I wanted to believe in them, but they just didn’t feel real. Dell, Harp, Cleo, they all speak and act like modern-day activists plopped into 1930s Nebraska. Dell is out and proud on an integrated basketball team, Cleo is a Black woman traveling freely as a photographer without a hint of struggle or cultural specificity, and everyone is having these very modern reckonings with racism and colonialism without ever seeming to deal with the harsh material realities of the time. I’m all for revisionist history when it’s clear that’s what the author is doing, but this book seems to want the weight of realism while constantly sidestepping what that actually requires.
I do think Russell can write, there are moments of insight and really lovely prose. But overall, this just didn’t land for me. It wants to be both a political reckoning and a fable, and in trying to be both, it ends up doing neither particularly well.
April 11, 2025
I received a copy for review purposes. All opinions are honest and mine alone.
Sixteen days - that’s how long it took me to read this 400 page book. It has pictures and a fair amount of white space so this is a very long time, especially for a book in the fiction genre. Granted, the subject is historically accurate and it’s not an upbeat, happy-go-lucky, page turner type story. Still, this is an inordinate amount of time. Kinda like how long it’s taking me to say this book was a slog. The writing is ok but the editor was asleep at their desk.
To start with, there are a lot of POV’s. We hear the story from them all, multiple times and then we hear it again and again and, well, you get the idea. There’s entirely too much telling. Because of the number of characters contributing, I found it very difficult to maintain their storylines from entry to entry, especially in the beginning. It wasn’t only the prairie that was dry. In the last few months, I’ve read a few books that were about horrific events, (child armies in Africa, labor camps in Poland, etc.), and those books had one thing in common. Even tho’ the stories were gruesome and horrifying, there was an element of hope and humor, even if it was just a flash for a moment or a passing character, it was there to offer relief to the readers. THE ANTIDOTE was burdensome all the time.
The only thing I found interesting about this story is what wasn’t told: did anyone actually do anything to make restitution? Answering that would require another book that I’m not sure I have enough literary strength to conquer, should the author, Karen Russell, decide to find her boots & mask to visit the dust bowl again📚
Read & Reviewed from a GoodReads GiveAway ARC, with thanks.
Sixteen days - that’s how long it took me to read this 400 page book. It has pictures and a fair amount of white space so this is a very long time, especially for a book in the fiction genre. Granted, the subject is historically accurate and it’s not an upbeat, happy-go-lucky, page turner type story. Still, this is an inordinate amount of time. Kinda like how long it’s taking me to say this book was a slog. The writing is ok but the editor was asleep at their desk.
To start with, there are a lot of POV’s. We hear the story from them all, multiple times and then we hear it again and again and, well, you get the idea. There’s entirely too much telling. Because of the number of characters contributing, I found it very difficult to maintain their storylines from entry to entry, especially in the beginning. It wasn’t only the prairie that was dry. In the last few months, I’ve read a few books that were about horrific events, (child armies in Africa, labor camps in Poland, etc.), and those books had one thing in common. Even tho’ the stories were gruesome and horrifying, there was an element of hope and humor, even if it was just a flash for a moment or a passing character, it was there to offer relief to the readers. THE ANTIDOTE was burdensome all the time.
The only thing I found interesting about this story is what wasn’t told: did anyone actually do anything to make restitution? Answering that would require another book that I’m not sure I have enough literary strength to conquer, should the author, Karen Russell, decide to find her boots & mask to visit the dust bowl again📚
Read & Reviewed from a GoodReads GiveAway ARC, with thanks.
March 12, 2025
The Antidote is a sweeping tale that merges historical fiction with magical realism. The book begins with the devastating Black Sunday dust storm which devastated the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. A town that is already coping with the Great Depression and the Dust bowl. It is a bleak place where a "Prairie Witch" serves as a vault to people's memories and secrets. The other characters are made up of a Polish farmer and his niece, a new Deal photographer, a basketball player and witch's apprentice.
If you have read one of Karen Russel's books, you are familiar with her writing, her use of magical realism in her stories, and how her books evoke emotion and are thought-provoking. The Antidote utilizes the climate issues to touch on memory, forgetting whether willfully or not, consequences, history, nature, loss, learning, and possibilities.
This book is both slow moving and intriguing. While I struggle with slow books, I found that I was able to go with the flow of this one. This book has a strong social justice message. Some will enjoy this some might not. It will depend on what you enjoy in books. My favorite character was the "Prairie Witch”. I enjoyed her sections the most. What shines in this book is the author's writing.
Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com 📖
If you have read one of Karen Russel's books, you are familiar with her writing, her use of magical realism in her stories, and how her books evoke emotion and are thought-provoking. The Antidote utilizes the climate issues to touch on memory, forgetting whether willfully or not, consequences, history, nature, loss, learning, and possibilities.
This book is both slow moving and intriguing. While I struggle with slow books, I found that I was able to go with the flow of this one. This book has a strong social justice message. Some will enjoy this some might not. It will depend on what you enjoy in books. My favorite character was the "Prairie Witch”. I enjoyed her sections the most. What shines in this book is the author's writing.
Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com 📖
did-not-finish
November 30, 2025Okay, I'm not going to star-rate this one (where possible) because I didn't even make it 5% of the way through.
Every reader has something they just won't read about, and for me, it's animal cruelty. I'm fine with writers who put it in their work, with readers who don't mind it, even with splatterpunk fans and the like who enjoy violence of this sort. But I can not read it.
Unfortunately, this book by a brilliant and highly celebrated author opens with a grisly scene of violence against animals. This put me off of the rest of the book in a major way. So I stopped reading, for my own peace of mind.
This will be an outlier opinion, no doubt, as the writing is gorgeous. I think this scene may not have affected me so deeply if I had been made aware of its existence before encountering it in such brilliant literary form. This is why I advocate for trigger warnings. Also, the opening scene does make a powerful statement about how we bring up boys, and I think that's important.
Thank you to the author Karen Russell, publishers Knopf, and NetGalley for an accessible advance digital copy of THE ANTIDOTE. All views are mine.
---------------
Every reader has something they just won't read about, and for me, it's animal cruelty. I'm fine with writers who put it in their work, with readers who don't mind it, even with splatterpunk fans and the like who enjoy violence of this sort. But I can not read it.
Unfortunately, this book by a brilliant and highly celebrated author opens with a grisly scene of violence against animals. This put me off of the rest of the book in a major way. So I stopped reading, for my own peace of mind.
This will be an outlier opinion, no doubt, as the writing is gorgeous. I think this scene may not have affected me so deeply if I had been made aware of its existence before encountering it in such brilliant literary form. This is why I advocate for trigger warnings. Also, the opening scene does make a powerful statement about how we bring up boys, and I think that's important.
Thank you to the author Karen Russell, publishers Knopf, and NetGalley for an accessible advance digital copy of THE ANTIDOTE. All views are mine.
---------------
August 6, 2025
“What Zintka was telling me was not a tragic story but a triumphant one, or else it was both and neither, it was a great braid of times and tones, it was her very life pushing at the seams of what could be told as a story. I heard her strength, her life-wish, naming itself.”
When the Great American Novel meets quantum physics, you get a rush of storytelling that is indeed bursting at the seams, spilling out a cast of unforgettable Searchers all over the fields of western Nebraska in the grip of the Dust Bowl.
The American Experiment, at its core, was but a dizzying push to colonize free lands that were anything but free. A fevered desire to uproot the Other, in order to take root oneself. A maddening attempt at self-creation that got drunk on erasure and the utter impossibility of its own sense of innocence.
So Karen Russell broke the rules and brought in all the particles to play in one moment in time.
Entangled. Superposed. Tunneling.
In a doe-eyed high school basketball player shooting hoops in the dead of night.
In prairie witches known as Vaults, who swallow painful memories for a living and the birth of a clean slate.
In a New Deal black photographer whose pictures reveal far more than meets the eye.
In an old Polish immigrant coming to terms with his haunted fallow lands.
And a scarecrow.
All of them living repositories of a collective American unconscious yearning to break free.
All of them swooped up in Biblical dust and spit right back out in Apocalyptic rain.
A spellbound novel that channels the burning urgency of “The Vaster Wilds”, the idiosyncrasy of “North Woods”, the poetic restoration of “Wandering Stars”, the acuity of “James” and the singing sentences of “All The Light We Cannot See”.
A searing work of fiction that feels something like a trance, interconnected and transcendental.
When the Great American Novel meets quantum physics, you get a rush of storytelling that is indeed bursting at the seams, spilling out a cast of unforgettable Searchers all over the fields of western Nebraska in the grip of the Dust Bowl.
The American Experiment, at its core, was but a dizzying push to colonize free lands that were anything but free. A fevered desire to uproot the Other, in order to take root oneself. A maddening attempt at self-creation that got drunk on erasure and the utter impossibility of its own sense of innocence.
So Karen Russell broke the rules and brought in all the particles to play in one moment in time.
Entangled. Superposed. Tunneling.
In a doe-eyed high school basketball player shooting hoops in the dead of night.
In prairie witches known as Vaults, who swallow painful memories for a living and the birth of a clean slate.
In a New Deal black photographer whose pictures reveal far more than meets the eye.
In an old Polish immigrant coming to terms with his haunted fallow lands.
And a scarecrow.
All of them living repositories of a collective American unconscious yearning to break free.
All of them swooped up in Biblical dust and spit right back out in Apocalyptic rain.
A spellbound novel that channels the burning urgency of “The Vaster Wilds”, the idiosyncrasy of “North Woods”, the poetic restoration of “Wandering Stars”, the acuity of “James” and the singing sentences of “All The Light We Cannot See”.
A searing work of fiction that feels something like a trance, interconnected and transcendental.
November 16, 2025
[5]
The Antidote was just the remedy I needed to bust my heart open. I m picky about magical realism, and generally any “witch” character—prairie or otherwise!--will turn me off. Historical fiction is not always my cuppa, either, unless the history frames a unique, imaginative story. Check check check and Karen Russell did all the right things. This wasn’t The Grapes of Wrath to me. The climate was just as dry but the narrative was way more riveting (to me). This is a multiple pov story about what it means to be human more than it is any other theme. Families, friends, adversaries, crime, love, is all there in this electrifying, suspenseful story that takes place in Nebraska in 1935.
We are introduced to a “Vault” or prairie witch, Antonini, that has a special talent and uses her skills to make a bare living. It’s a different kind of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She uses an intriguing earhorn that paying folks speak into and tell her their secrets. She goes into a trance, so she doesn’t consciously know their secrets. The person who makes the “deposit” gets a receipt in case he or she wants to get that secret deposit back later on. In the meantime, that client gets to go on with their life without the disturbing or rattling facts of their secret plaguing them day in and day out. She still has her own memory, of course, of her year at the Home For Unwed Mothers at age fifteen. Her baby was taken and told that he had died.
The Dust Storm plays out in a gripping and vivid scenario that is better than any “twister” movie I’ve seen! This seems to cause the Antidote to lose her powers and all her deposits. There’s also a cruel, corrupt local sheriff in this town called Uz that uses the Antidote for all his deposit needs, if you know what I mean. He is about to run for office again and, because of him, a potentially innocent man is sitting in jail for murder.
Harp Oletsky is a Nebraskan farmer who came here with his poverty stricken Polish parents in the latter 1800s to receive 160 acres from the government to farm and to have an opportunity to make a living. Harp doesn’t know what kinds of sacrifices or emotional conflicts that his father, Tomasz, has done in order to keep food in his family’s mouths and a roof over their heads. But Tomasz once visited a prairie witch, years ago. Why? That will unfold and add even more grit and girth to this story.
Then there is Harp’s niece, Dell, who comes to live with Harp after she is orphaned—her mother was murdered. She is only 15, confused about life, sad and grieving, but is a damned good player on her girl’s basketball team. Oh, and there is a scarecrow that sits out in Harp’s field waving its arms.
Then there is is Cleo Allfrey, a Black photographer hired by the government to help Depression-era farmers in the Central Plains by taking pictures that will appeal to the public. One of the things I enjoyed most was the discussion of how to frame photographs honestly, yet manipulate the picture without actually shredding it of its integrity as truth. She ends up with a camera that does more than she expected it could do—I won’t give that away, but it is part of the magical realism that yet helps anchor this book to an emotional reality.
Why did Harp’s house/farm/field survive the Dust Storm that nobody else in Uz survived like that? What are all these strange beautiful colors on the horizon, in the sky, in the wheat? What is happening on the Oletsky acreage?
I just wanted to give a mini-outline of sorts, a brief description of a story that blew me away, along with the Dust Storm! I must say, there are characters in the story to empathize for, the struggle to retain your humanity while, at the same time, stripping others of their’s. If you’ve never felt for the Pawnee (and other) nations of Native Americans in a deep and searing way, you will by the end of this story. There is also a lot of information at the end of the book—afterwords, thoughts, information, acknowledgements, that endeared me to this book even more.
The prose, characters, and imagery are astounding, and I was never bored, not for a minute, not for a second. I will say this—closer to the beginning of the book, I thought Karen Russell and Knopf may have hoisted themselves on their own petard. The characters are in first person, and I think having a White author narrating a Black character ended up with perhaps a few sensitivity committee hearings. In 1935, POC were not referring to as Black with a Capital B. Using the small “b” would have been derogatory for its time, and I suppose they felt that any other word would be inappropriate. Either way was going to be cringey—either by anachronism or appellation. But the novel was so strong, so staggering, that those problems stopped bothering me.
“People talk about memories flying into and out of their heads. But my work makes me wonder if our maps are wrong. It seems to me that the seat of memory is much lower down…People desire with their whole bodies, and they remember that way, too.
“There is no safe way to remove chapters from the book of one’s life. You cannot wait until there is more time, more money, more safety, less pain to recollect the past.”
The Land Lost Acknowledgements at end of the book says something important I left out, and then I read Gumble’s Yard’s review and, with a nod to my fellow reviewer, I knew I had to include it. If you love this book, you also would want to acknowledge the lies and revisions in history that are passed down. It’s time, as this book invites us to, to accept that reparations are owed to the people whose land the white man stole.
“The Antidote uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in people's private and collective memories, the willful omissions passed down generation to generation, and the myths that have been used by the U.S. government and White settlers to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native lands.”
The Antidote was just the remedy I needed to bust my heart open. I m picky about magical realism, and generally any “witch” character—prairie or otherwise!--will turn me off. Historical fiction is not always my cuppa, either, unless the history frames a unique, imaginative story. Check check check and Karen Russell did all the right things. This wasn’t The Grapes of Wrath to me. The climate was just as dry but the narrative was way more riveting (to me). This is a multiple pov story about what it means to be human more than it is any other theme. Families, friends, adversaries, crime, love, is all there in this electrifying, suspenseful story that takes place in Nebraska in 1935.
We are introduced to a “Vault” or prairie witch, Antonini, that has a special talent and uses her skills to make a bare living. It’s a different kind of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She uses an intriguing earhorn that paying folks speak into and tell her their secrets. She goes into a trance, so she doesn’t consciously know their secrets. The person who makes the “deposit” gets a receipt in case he or she wants to get that secret deposit back later on. In the meantime, that client gets to go on with their life without the disturbing or rattling facts of their secret plaguing them day in and day out. She still has her own memory, of course, of her year at the Home For Unwed Mothers at age fifteen. Her baby was taken and told that he had died.
The Dust Storm plays out in a gripping and vivid scenario that is better than any “twister” movie I’ve seen! This seems to cause the Antidote to lose her powers and all her deposits. There’s also a cruel, corrupt local sheriff in this town called Uz that uses the Antidote for all his deposit needs, if you know what I mean. He is about to run for office again and, because of him, a potentially innocent man is sitting in jail for murder.
Harp Oletsky is a Nebraskan farmer who came here with his poverty stricken Polish parents in the latter 1800s to receive 160 acres from the government to farm and to have an opportunity to make a living. Harp doesn’t know what kinds of sacrifices or emotional conflicts that his father, Tomasz, has done in order to keep food in his family’s mouths and a roof over their heads. But Tomasz once visited a prairie witch, years ago. Why? That will unfold and add even more grit and girth to this story.
Then there is Harp’s niece, Dell, who comes to live with Harp after she is orphaned—her mother was murdered. She is only 15, confused about life, sad and grieving, but is a damned good player on her girl’s basketball team. Oh, and there is a scarecrow that sits out in Harp’s field waving its arms.
Then there is is Cleo Allfrey, a Black photographer hired by the government to help Depression-era farmers in the Central Plains by taking pictures that will appeal to the public. One of the things I enjoyed most was the discussion of how to frame photographs honestly, yet manipulate the picture without actually shredding it of its integrity as truth. She ends up with a camera that does more than she expected it could do—I won’t give that away, but it is part of the magical realism that yet helps anchor this book to an emotional reality.
Why did Harp’s house/farm/field survive the Dust Storm that nobody else in Uz survived like that? What are all these strange beautiful colors on the horizon, in the sky, in the wheat? What is happening on the Oletsky acreage?
I just wanted to give a mini-outline of sorts, a brief description of a story that blew me away, along with the Dust Storm! I must say, there are characters in the story to empathize for, the struggle to retain your humanity while, at the same time, stripping others of their’s. If you’ve never felt for the Pawnee (and other) nations of Native Americans in a deep and searing way, you will by the end of this story. There is also a lot of information at the end of the book—afterwords, thoughts, information, acknowledgements, that endeared me to this book even more.
The prose, characters, and imagery are astounding, and I was never bored, not for a minute, not for a second. I will say this—closer to the beginning of the book, I thought Karen Russell and Knopf may have hoisted themselves on their own petard. The characters are in first person, and I think having a White author narrating a Black character ended up with perhaps a few sensitivity committee hearings. In 1935, POC were not referring to as Black with a Capital B. Using the small “b” would have been derogatory for its time, and I suppose they felt that any other word would be inappropriate. Either way was going to be cringey—either by anachronism or appellation. But the novel was so strong, so staggering, that those problems stopped bothering me.
“People talk about memories flying into and out of their heads. But my work makes me wonder if our maps are wrong. It seems to me that the seat of memory is much lower down…People desire with their whole bodies, and they remember that way, too.
“There is no safe way to remove chapters from the book of one’s life. You cannot wait until there is more time, more money, more safety, less pain to recollect the past.”
The Land Lost Acknowledgements at end of the book says something important I left out, and then I read Gumble’s Yard’s review and, with a nod to my fellow reviewer, I knew I had to include it. If you love this book, you also would want to acknowledge the lies and revisions in history that are passed down. It’s time, as this book invites us to, to accept that reparations are owed to the people whose land the white man stole.
“The Antidote uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in people's private and collective memories, the willful omissions passed down generation to generation, and the myths that have been used by the U.S. government and White settlers to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native lands.”
October 7, 2025
Rating: 3* of five
FINALIST for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction! Winner announced 19 November 2025
The Publisher Says: From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities.
The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I cried "Uncle" at 64% because I just don't care anymore.
I read that, thought, "I couldn't agree more," and put the book down. I had steadily lost interest, which was a sadness since I really wanted this read to thrill and delight me. It *sounds* great!
Knopf thinks $14.99 is right and proper. I say use the library.
FINALIST for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction! Winner announced 19 November 2025
The Publisher Says: From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities.
The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I cried "Uncle" at 64% because I just don't care anymore.
I hadn't meant to sound so angry. Nothing about their calm faces in my uncle's kitchen made any sense.
I read that, thought, "I couldn't agree more," and put the book down. I had steadily lost interest, which was a sadness since I really wanted this read to thrill and delight me. It *sounds* great!
Knopf thinks $14.99 is right and proper. I say use the library.
November 26, 2024
When she was denied the Pulitzer despite being a finalist (in a year when that prize wasn't distributed at all), Karen Russell was unknown, young, but that was over ten years ago. With The Antidote, she firmly establishes her place at the forefront of American letters. She has created three powerhouse narrators (and others, but three major ones), to tell the story of the effects of United States colonialism practices and its ravages on land and people and ways of life. Each character is sharply delineated, each contributing to the story. And whereas there have been many books adding to the shameful history of the manifest destiny of the western expansion, I can't remember being as moved as I was by this one.
September 30, 2025
Such potential, such a strong opening, to turn into such a slog and a mess! Plot-wise, character-wise, and thematically, this could have been great, and yet it wound up falling apart in every way.
The Antidote is a work of historical fiction and magic realism, set in 1935, in Nebraska, at the height of the Depression and the Dust Bowl. The title references the trade name of a “witch” aka Vault, who takes “deposits” of memories from people who want rid of them; her real name is Antonina, a middle-aged woman traumatized by the theft of her infant son at a home for unwed mothers. The other three major narrators, in rough order of importance, are an orphaned teen, Dell, who copes with her mother’s loss through basketball; Dell’s uncle, Harp, a local farmer; and Cleo, a visiting photographer with a magic camera. There’s also a sentient scarecrow who pops up occasionally, a long flashback from Harp’s dead father, and a couple of pages from the POV of an anthropomorphized cat who serves as a furry deus ex machina at the end.
Plot-wise, this is a mess. At first I was invested in the characters (at least, Antonina and Dell) and their personal struggles, but the book increasingly leaves those by the wayside as it tries to address larger issues. And the author never seems to have quite settled on where to focus, what this is really about. A major plotline deals with a corrupt and abusive sheriff, who is covering up murders to help his election chances while framing an innocent man. But this thread ultimately goes nowhere; we never meet the wrongfully convicted guy or learn what happens. Meanwhile the author is clearly very interested in writing about the genocide of Native Americans, including land theft and residential schools, but never quite figures out how to incorporate this into the novel, beyond a few infodumps to catch up less-informed readers on the history and to explain connections between empire, violence, and environmental degradation. There are no major indigenous characters (and only a few bit-part ones, all young women sporting the same defiant and self-confident personality), and no plot stakes affecting them.
It doesn’t help that while the author is a talented writer, she gets carried away with her powers of description and figurative language. Reading this novel feels like wading through a swamp at times, so many words to slog through, most of which neither advance the plot nor tell us anything new about the characters.
Speaking of the characters, they all share the same narrative voice despite being in theory diverse: Harp the barely-educated white Nebraska farmer, and Cleo the professional black woman from the East Coast, shouldn’t sound interchangeable, but they do. Cleo is the least fleshed-out; we learn almost nothing about her life and she feels like a plot device.
All the narrators (and I mean all of them, even the cat), are also very woke, in the original sense: keenly aware of mechanisms of oppression operating in their society while entirely undeceived by prevailing attitudes, and blissfully free of internalized anything (misogyny, racism, homophobia—the last coming up via Dell’s afterthought of a romance with a teammate. That could’ve been a meaningful friendship but instead it’s the world’s laziest and least-developed romance). As another reviewer noted, it all feels divorced from the harsh material realities of their time. There’s an implicit, comfortable, upper-middle-class assumption that they’ll all be fine, despite the fact that it’s the Depression and none of them are upper-middle-class. Everyone’s livelihood is at stake, none of them have obvious alternatives for supporting themselves, and they’re all supremely unconcerned about it.
Which brings us to the speculative and thematic elements. Russell has some good ideas for magical elements that would jive well with her themes, and almost gets there at times: when we see people being forced to give up memories, or implanting fake ones. But to fully incorporate this element would require committing to its horrifying dystopian possibilities, and this is a book that forever dances around the edges, with little thought put into how magical powers might be used. The same applies to the magic camera, which no one ever thinks of using to try to solve the murders despite its propensity to reveal past crimes.
Russell’s notion of how people would use Vaults also seems unlikely: giving up bad memories, sure (though I wanted more on this—for instance, does relinquishing memories cure PTSD? There’s a good indication it might, but the author seems afraid to go there in a novel more interested in critiquing “forgetting”). But giving up good ones? The book insists people would deposit precious memories for “safekeeping,” which makes no sense: if the Vault dies or moves away or your small paper deposit slip is lost or destroyed or stolen, your memories are lost forever. That many people would want back memories they’d already paid to discard (which is a major plot point) also seems unlikely.
Finally, on the social issues themselves. I think it’s great if readers somehow unaware of the treatment of Native Americans learn about it from this book, but it’s a poor choice if that’s your primary goal, given the lack of Native characters or plot relevance. (If, in fact, this education is your goal, but you don't want to dive into something as heavy as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, try Lakota Woman, or The Strangers. On the homes for unwed mothers, try The Girls Who Went Away.)
But the book runs into the pitfall of so much performative activism. The climax consists of Harp delivering a land acknowledgment speech to his confused and angry neighbors, and when they demand to know what he’s proposing, exactly—what does he want them to do about it?—he stammers a non-answer about how “there must be a better way” and “let’s put our heads together.” One senses that Russell has hit the same wall as her character: she doesn’t know where to go beyond “raising awareness.” White guilt thus becomes the focus and the goal. Even the bit-part Native character who is presumably present (Russell has carefully ensured representation of all possible identities on Dell’s basketball team, who are shown setting up the room) is given no opportunity to react or offer an opinion. And the fact that Harp’s need to share information regardless of benefit to anyone also derails a more concrete opportunity for justice is brushed over as unimportant.
It's a shame, because Russell clearly meant well and the book shows strong initial promise. But ultimately too messy to recommend. And, please, activist authors: be bolder than this! If your plot and characters exist as a mouthpiece for social issues, dive all the way in, and give us some vision! Awareness has been pretty well raised by now, among people who care to know. If you’re going to write an activist novel, offer an answer to the question “now what?”
The Antidote is a work of historical fiction and magic realism, set in 1935, in Nebraska, at the height of the Depression and the Dust Bowl. The title references the trade name of a “witch” aka Vault, who takes “deposits” of memories from people who want rid of them; her real name is Antonina, a middle-aged woman traumatized by the theft of her infant son at a home for unwed mothers. The other three major narrators, in rough order of importance, are an orphaned teen, Dell, who copes with her mother’s loss through basketball; Dell’s uncle, Harp, a local farmer; and Cleo, a visiting photographer with a magic camera. There’s also a sentient scarecrow who pops up occasionally, a long flashback from Harp’s dead father, and a couple of pages from the POV of an anthropomorphized cat who serves as a furry deus ex machina at the end.
Plot-wise, this is a mess. At first I was invested in the characters (at least, Antonina and Dell) and their personal struggles, but the book increasingly leaves those by the wayside as it tries to address larger issues. And the author never seems to have quite settled on where to focus, what this is really about. A major plotline deals with a corrupt and abusive sheriff, who is covering up murders to help his election chances while framing an innocent man. But this thread ultimately goes nowhere; we never meet the wrongfully convicted guy or learn what happens. Meanwhile the author is clearly very interested in writing about the genocide of Native Americans, including land theft and residential schools, but never quite figures out how to incorporate this into the novel, beyond a few infodumps to catch up less-informed readers on the history and to explain connections between empire, violence, and environmental degradation. There are no major indigenous characters (and only a few bit-part ones, all young women sporting the same defiant and self-confident personality), and no plot stakes affecting them.
It doesn’t help that while the author is a talented writer, she gets carried away with her powers of description and figurative language. Reading this novel feels like wading through a swamp at times, so many words to slog through, most of which neither advance the plot nor tell us anything new about the characters.
Speaking of the characters, they all share the same narrative voice despite being in theory diverse: Harp the barely-educated white Nebraska farmer, and Cleo the professional black woman from the East Coast, shouldn’t sound interchangeable, but they do. Cleo is the least fleshed-out; we learn almost nothing about her life and she feels like a plot device.
All the narrators (and I mean all of them, even the cat), are also very woke, in the original sense: keenly aware of mechanisms of oppression operating in their society while entirely undeceived by prevailing attitudes, and blissfully free of internalized anything (misogyny, racism, homophobia—the last coming up via Dell’s afterthought of a romance with a teammate. That could’ve been a meaningful friendship but instead it’s the world’s laziest and least-developed romance). As another reviewer noted, it all feels divorced from the harsh material realities of their time. There’s an implicit, comfortable, upper-middle-class assumption that they’ll all be fine, despite the fact that it’s the Depression and none of them are upper-middle-class. Everyone’s livelihood is at stake, none of them have obvious alternatives for supporting themselves, and they’re all supremely unconcerned about it.
Which brings us to the speculative and thematic elements. Russell has some good ideas for magical elements that would jive well with her themes, and almost gets there at times: when we see people being forced to give up memories, or implanting fake ones. But to fully incorporate this element would require committing to its horrifying dystopian possibilities, and this is a book that forever dances around the edges, with little thought put into how magical powers might be used. The same applies to the magic camera, which no one ever thinks of using to try to solve the murders despite its propensity to reveal past crimes.
Russell’s notion of how people would use Vaults also seems unlikely: giving up bad memories, sure (though I wanted more on this—for instance, does relinquishing memories cure PTSD? There’s a good indication it might, but the author seems afraid to go there in a novel more interested in critiquing “forgetting”). But giving up good ones? The book insists people would deposit precious memories for “safekeeping,” which makes no sense: if the Vault dies or moves away or your small paper deposit slip is lost or destroyed or stolen, your memories are lost forever. That many people would want back memories they’d already paid to discard (which is a major plot point) also seems unlikely.
Finally, on the social issues themselves. I think it’s great if readers somehow unaware of the treatment of Native Americans learn about it from this book, but it’s a poor choice if that’s your primary goal, given the lack of Native characters or plot relevance. (If, in fact, this education is your goal, but you don't want to dive into something as heavy as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, try Lakota Woman, or The Strangers. On the homes for unwed mothers, try The Girls Who Went Away.)
But the book runs into the pitfall of so much performative activism. The climax consists of Harp delivering a land acknowledgment speech to his confused and angry neighbors, and when they demand to know what he’s proposing, exactly—what does he want them to do about it?—he stammers a non-answer about how “there must be a better way” and “let’s put our heads together.” One senses that Russell has hit the same wall as her character: she doesn’t know where to go beyond “raising awareness.” White guilt thus becomes the focus and the goal. Even the bit-part Native character who is presumably present (Russell has carefully ensured representation of all possible identities on Dell’s basketball team, who are shown setting up the room) is given no opportunity to react or offer an opinion. And the fact that Harp’s need to share information regardless of benefit to anyone also derails a more concrete opportunity for justice is brushed over as unimportant.
It's a shame, because Russell clearly meant well and the book shows strong initial promise. But ultimately too messy to recommend. And, please, activist authors: be bolder than this! If your plot and characters exist as a mouthpiece for social issues, dive all the way in, and give us some vision! Awareness has been pretty well raised by now, among people who care to know. If you’re going to write an activist novel, offer an answer to the question “now what?”
May 30, 2025
This took me far too long to read but I finally did it.
I have not read Karen Russell before ( Swamplandia! ) but I knew enough to expect quirky. Sure enough this novel has a prairie witch with an ear trumpet who collects your memories for safekeeping. Despite myself I was intrigued by this concept and would have been happy if the novel stayed with that. However this story billows out to become a "dust bowl epic" replete with talking scarecrows, stolen land, stolen babies, a magic camera, unsolved murders, and a botched electrocution to name just a few aspects. A "Lost Land Acknowledgement" at the end explains : " The Antidote uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in peoples private and collective memories ...and the myths that have been used ... to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native Lands ". Fair enough. I wish it worked better to achieve these ends without needing a historical postscript and an authors note to explain it.
Summary - Strong start, squandered potential.
I have not read Karen Russell before ( Swamplandia! ) but I knew enough to expect quirky. Sure enough this novel has a prairie witch with an ear trumpet who collects your memories for safekeeping. Despite myself I was intrigued by this concept and would have been happy if the novel stayed with that. However this story billows out to become a "dust bowl epic" replete with talking scarecrows, stolen land, stolen babies, a magic camera, unsolved murders, and a botched electrocution to name just a few aspects. A "Lost Land Acknowledgement" at the end explains : " The Antidote uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in peoples private and collective memories ...and the myths that have been used ... to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native Lands ". Fair enough. I wish it worked better to achieve these ends without needing a historical postscript and an authors note to explain it.
Summary - Strong start, squandered potential.
May 28, 2025
It was an iffy start for me. Twenty, thirty pages in and I couldn't decide if I wanted to continue. Something about "The Antidote" just wasn’t grabbing me. The main conceit — “prairie witches” and “vaults” — was a bit much. The elements of magical realism I hadn’t expected. Characters with eccentric names like Asphodel Oletsky. I almost put it down.
Clearly, I persisted, and “The Antidote” has been haunting me ever since. It is rich with ideas and emotion. With scenes that work on multiple levels, that sneak up on you when you’re thinking about something else and a whole new level of meaning presents itself. It comes to mind almost everyday as I read the news.
Russell's novel is about memory. Personal memory, collective memory, national memory. Memories kept and lost. Memories deliberately erased -- what we don't want to remember about what we did or should have done; what is politically inconvenient to be remembered -- and transformed into untrue or half-true stories.
The book is set in a fictional town called Uz, Nebraska. (Uz was the land where the biblical man named Job resided and was tested.) It’s the 1930s, the time of the Great Depression, so things are bad. For some parts of the country — like Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Nebraska — things became unimaginably worse as wind storms blackened the skies for days, and sand covered houses and people suffocated, buried under "five-foot drifts" when they abandoned their cars on the noon-dark roads.
The main character of the book is Antonina Teresa Rossi but her professional name is The Antidote ("a panacea for every ailment from heartburn to nightmares," her sign reads). She’s a prairie witch, which is to say, “A vault to store the things people cannot stand to know, or bear to forget.” People “deposit” their memories in her ear. Once the deposit is made, the customer loses the memory until such time as he/she chooses to make a withdrawal. Antonia, the vault, doesn’t know what she’s been told ("I know as little about what I contain as a safety deposit box knows about its rocks.") so the memory is safety hidden away. The job has a kind of seedy aspect: She rents a room on the third floor of a boardinghouse and clients -- men, mostly -- visit her.
Antonina thinks of it this way: I will take whatever they cannot stand to know. The memories that make them chase impossible dreams, that make them sick with regret and grief. Whatever they hope to preserve for the future. Whatever cargo unbalances the cart. Whatever days and nights they cannot absorb into their living. Whatever they wish to forget for a morning or a decade. I can hold on to anything for anyone. Milk, honey, rainwater, venom, blood. Horror, happiness, sorrow, regret—pour it all into me. I am the empty bottle. I am a new kind of antidote to all that ails you.
The book opens with one such deposit, made by a man named Harp Oletsky. It’s a nightmarish scene from when Harp was a young boy. It’s a “jack drive” -- “jack” as in jackrabbits. They threaten crops, these creatures. “Worse than locusts,”his father says. Hundreds of them have been corralled so they can be killed. Clubbed to death. Harp's father handed him a club. This is the memory Harp, as an adult, deposits so it can never haunt him again.
When we meet the Antidote. It's four years into a terrible drought, the land plagued by brownouts and grasshoppers, jackrabbits, beetles. One night — April 14, “Black Sunday” — one of the worst dust storms in American history sends more than 300,000 tons of topsoil into the air. It's a "black blizzard." A terrified Antonina wakes in a jail cell, trembling, her fingers clawed into the mattress, screaming for help. Suddenly, inexplicably, feeling “weightless.”
As she comes to her senses she begins to understand what has happened. What "weight" has been lifted from her. All the memories deposited in her by other people are gone. Vanished. She can recall nothing (because she never knew any of them in the first place). She has awakened into a world of uncertain memories and blown-away soil and devastation. And danger: If anyone wants to make a memory withdrawal, she’s helpless. Her customers will be very angry.
“The Antidote” follows Antonina as she tries to figure out what to do, how to get her power back, what to tell people if they present their deposit slips. Other characters enter the story: Harp Oletsky, a farmer. His niece Asphodel (“Dell”), an orphan who moved in with her uncle. Cleo Allfrey, a Black woman photographer sent by the New Deal Resettlement Administration to document the impact of the dust storms. And a scarecrow.
And (as an insistent voice at my feet just reminded me) a cat.
What a strange and compelling narrative, filled with mystery and suspense, heartbreak and outrage, and even magic. (Cleo unknowingly buys a camera that takes pictures of things that happened in the past, what's before the lens in the present, and what might well be the future. At any given moment she might look at the same print and see something different than what she saw before.) What links these people, these stories, is memory. Russell explores how our memories work, the functions they serve in shaping us, how we perceive ourselves. Our community. Our country. Stories weave in and out among each other, now separate, now converging. An unsolved series of murders terrifies the community. A corrupt, violent, and vindictive sheriff concocts stories about his investigation. An innocent man is arrested and condemned to death. Dell plays basketball with her girl friends, hungers for her murdered mother, and decides one day to become a prairie witch herself. Antonina aches at the loss of her son, who was taken from her as a baby while she was at a home for unwed teenaged mothers. Is he still alive? Would she know him if she saw him? And what will happen to her if a client finds she can't return his deposit? Cleo, the photographer, struggles against the obstacles of race and misogyny. She knows that if she -- if New Deal officials -- hope to move Congress (because that's what the photos are supposed to do), the faces she captures must be White faces; nobody cares about poor Black people.
“The Antidote” blew me away in a hundred different ways. Russell’s language can be startling and strangely evocative, demanding of a double take (the deposit at the start of the book, about the slaughter of the rabbits, speaks of “turnipy sweating bodies and a festive feeling in the air like a penny rubbed between two fingers, like blood shocked into a socket.” Someone is described as “a rat-gnawed corncob of a man.” Elsewhere: “A shovel-faced yellow pony nosed around them, her lips moving like those of a woman in church.” And: “A voice like a bear torn apart by arrows.” Lord, what must that sound like?)
There are the apparent allusions to The Wizard of Oz (Uz/Oz, the scarecrow, etc.) the Bible: so many threads to follow and untie! Throughout the book there are black and white photos, actual submissions to the New Deal program. Program editors sorted through them, punching holes in the pictures that were rejected. With one exception -- a "jack driver" -- the pictures reproduced here show the holes that mark their rejection. And also to serve to act as emblems of erasure.
The torrent of voices in the deposits Antonina has taken over the years can be both touching and shocking, depending on what memory was being put in the Vault. She can't hear them, but the reader can. The anonymous voices we find in one passage flow seamlessly from touchingly tender to utterly horrifying and guilt-ridden: I am here to deposit the first time I drank a strawberry soda… like what I imagined kissing to be. The fizz rose to my brain and I heard God and God said: order a second strawberry soda, Bertie. I never want the memory of that first drink to fade. When I’m an old man and all my senses have dulled, I want to taste my twelfth summer again— I was there when they moved on her. I didn’t join in but I didn’t try to stop them. Get me out of that damn field I can’t stand to hear her screaming we were all just kids this happened thirty-nine years ago and I am sick and tired of listening to her begging us to stop make it stop take it out of my head some nights the sound gets so loud that I can’t hear myself think…
It's powerful stuff. What would forget if I could? (If I remember right -- no pun intended -- in his memoir "A Sort of Life," Graham Greene speaks of a toad beneath a rock. It's a metaphor for something he wishes he could forget. No matter how hard he tried, though, and no matter how many years had passed, the urge rose within him to lift the rock and see if the toad was still there. To recall the memory.)
Most of all, what haunts me most about "The Antidote" is what it reveals and suggests about memory and the careless ways we treat history and fact. There’s a line — it's almost a throwaway — that caught me up: “The past was not so sacrosanct, I discovered. You could simply make more up.”
These words speak powerfully of our own time: The battles currently being fought over what will be taught in schools and memorialized in museums and by statues and the names of streets and schools. What will/must not be taught but be erased and deleted. Stories meant to enlighten are replaced by stories that hide or manipulate or undermine what is real. In the Antidote, a character belatedly learns about the people who lived on this land before the Whites came: the Pawnee, Otto, Lakota, and others. The dust storms themselves act as metaphors for the cost of this erasure of the past: "When many thousands of us decide to forget the same truths, what happens? Look at what is happening to the soil without roots. We are the children of these crimes of memory, and we go on committing them.”
It's a powerful point, one that not everyone in Uz is grateful to be reminded of.
Writing this, I can't help but think Orwell’s well-known stern pronouncement in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “Who controls the past controls the future… Who controls the present controls the past.” Indeed. Big Brother removed facts from photos, changed what was in the historical record, and people came to believe what they were told to believe. In "The Antidote," this same process finds expression in the person of the prairie witch. "People really believe these lies you pour into them! Won the state spelling bee. Survived a shoot-out. Reconciled with a brother. Whatever you whisper into this contraption becomes real to them. No different than their other memories.” Truth and falsehood become interchangeable. What is not truly remembered can be made into something else entirely.
Around the time I was reading “The Antidote” an Executive Order was issued by the Trump White House. It read: “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Very soon after the order was issued, books were taken off the shelves of the library at West Point, the head librarian of the Library of Congress was dismissed, experts in various fields were fired, the Gulf of Mexico was renamed the Gulf of America, the Department of Education was dismantled, and schools and libraries were threatened with defunding if they didn’t follow certain rules with their curricula. The Executive Order was titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
Somehow — miraculously — “The Antidote” captures and comments on all this without being pedantic or overbearing, without sacrificing Story to Message. The book that I almost put down is now a favorite.
Thanks to Knopf and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
Clearly, I persisted, and “The Antidote” has been haunting me ever since. It is rich with ideas and emotion. With scenes that work on multiple levels, that sneak up on you when you’re thinking about something else and a whole new level of meaning presents itself. It comes to mind almost everyday as I read the news.
Russell's novel is about memory. Personal memory, collective memory, national memory. Memories kept and lost. Memories deliberately erased -- what we don't want to remember about what we did or should have done; what is politically inconvenient to be remembered -- and transformed into untrue or half-true stories.
The book is set in a fictional town called Uz, Nebraska. (Uz was the land where the biblical man named Job resided and was tested.) It’s the 1930s, the time of the Great Depression, so things are bad. For some parts of the country — like Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Nebraska — things became unimaginably worse as wind storms blackened the skies for days, and sand covered houses and people suffocated, buried under "five-foot drifts" when they abandoned their cars on the noon-dark roads.
The main character of the book is Antonina Teresa Rossi but her professional name is The Antidote ("a panacea for every ailment from heartburn to nightmares," her sign reads). She’s a prairie witch, which is to say, “A vault to store the things people cannot stand to know, or bear to forget.” People “deposit” their memories in her ear. Once the deposit is made, the customer loses the memory until such time as he/she chooses to make a withdrawal. Antonia, the vault, doesn’t know what she’s been told ("I know as little about what I contain as a safety deposit box knows about its rocks.") so the memory is safety hidden away. The job has a kind of seedy aspect: She rents a room on the third floor of a boardinghouse and clients -- men, mostly -- visit her.
Antonina thinks of it this way: I will take whatever they cannot stand to know. The memories that make them chase impossible dreams, that make them sick with regret and grief. Whatever they hope to preserve for the future. Whatever cargo unbalances the cart. Whatever days and nights they cannot absorb into their living. Whatever they wish to forget for a morning or a decade. I can hold on to anything for anyone. Milk, honey, rainwater, venom, blood. Horror, happiness, sorrow, regret—pour it all into me. I am the empty bottle. I am a new kind of antidote to all that ails you.
The book opens with one such deposit, made by a man named Harp Oletsky. It’s a nightmarish scene from when Harp was a young boy. It’s a “jack drive” -- “jack” as in jackrabbits. They threaten crops, these creatures. “Worse than locusts,”his father says. Hundreds of them have been corralled so they can be killed. Clubbed to death. Harp's father handed him a club. This is the memory Harp, as an adult, deposits so it can never haunt him again.
When we meet the Antidote. It's four years into a terrible drought, the land plagued by brownouts and grasshoppers, jackrabbits, beetles. One night — April 14, “Black Sunday” — one of the worst dust storms in American history sends more than 300,000 tons of topsoil into the air. It's a "black blizzard." A terrified Antonina wakes in a jail cell, trembling, her fingers clawed into the mattress, screaming for help. Suddenly, inexplicably, feeling “weightless.”
As she comes to her senses she begins to understand what has happened. What "weight" has been lifted from her. All the memories deposited in her by other people are gone. Vanished. She can recall nothing (because she never knew any of them in the first place). She has awakened into a world of uncertain memories and blown-away soil and devastation. And danger: If anyone wants to make a memory withdrawal, she’s helpless. Her customers will be very angry.
“The Antidote” follows Antonina as she tries to figure out what to do, how to get her power back, what to tell people if they present their deposit slips. Other characters enter the story: Harp Oletsky, a farmer. His niece Asphodel (“Dell”), an orphan who moved in with her uncle. Cleo Allfrey, a Black woman photographer sent by the New Deal Resettlement Administration to document the impact of the dust storms. And a scarecrow.
And (as an insistent voice at my feet just reminded me) a cat.
What a strange and compelling narrative, filled with mystery and suspense, heartbreak and outrage, and even magic. (Cleo unknowingly buys a camera that takes pictures of things that happened in the past, what's before the lens in the present, and what might well be the future. At any given moment she might look at the same print and see something different than what she saw before.) What links these people, these stories, is memory. Russell explores how our memories work, the functions they serve in shaping us, how we perceive ourselves. Our community. Our country. Stories weave in and out among each other, now separate, now converging. An unsolved series of murders terrifies the community. A corrupt, violent, and vindictive sheriff concocts stories about his investigation. An innocent man is arrested and condemned to death. Dell plays basketball with her girl friends, hungers for her murdered mother, and decides one day to become a prairie witch herself. Antonina aches at the loss of her son, who was taken from her as a baby while she was at a home for unwed teenaged mothers. Is he still alive? Would she know him if she saw him? And what will happen to her if a client finds she can't return his deposit? Cleo, the photographer, struggles against the obstacles of race and misogyny. She knows that if she -- if New Deal officials -- hope to move Congress (because that's what the photos are supposed to do), the faces she captures must be White faces; nobody cares about poor Black people.
“The Antidote” blew me away in a hundred different ways. Russell’s language can be startling and strangely evocative, demanding of a double take (the deposit at the start of the book, about the slaughter of the rabbits, speaks of “turnipy sweating bodies and a festive feeling in the air like a penny rubbed between two fingers, like blood shocked into a socket.” Someone is described as “a rat-gnawed corncob of a man.” Elsewhere: “A shovel-faced yellow pony nosed around them, her lips moving like those of a woman in church.” And: “A voice like a bear torn apart by arrows.” Lord, what must that sound like?)
There are the apparent allusions to The Wizard of Oz (Uz/Oz, the scarecrow, etc.) the Bible: so many threads to follow and untie! Throughout the book there are black and white photos, actual submissions to the New Deal program. Program editors sorted through them, punching holes in the pictures that were rejected. With one exception -- a "jack driver" -- the pictures reproduced here show the holes that mark their rejection. And also to serve to act as emblems of erasure.
The torrent of voices in the deposits Antonina has taken over the years can be both touching and shocking, depending on what memory was being put in the Vault. She can't hear them, but the reader can. The anonymous voices we find in one passage flow seamlessly from touchingly tender to utterly horrifying and guilt-ridden: I am here to deposit the first time I drank a strawberry soda… like what I imagined kissing to be. The fizz rose to my brain and I heard God and God said: order a second strawberry soda, Bertie. I never want the memory of that first drink to fade. When I’m an old man and all my senses have dulled, I want to taste my twelfth summer again— I was there when they moved on her. I didn’t join in but I didn’t try to stop them. Get me out of that damn field I can’t stand to hear her screaming we were all just kids this happened thirty-nine years ago and I am sick and tired of listening to her begging us to stop make it stop take it out of my head some nights the sound gets so loud that I can’t hear myself think…
It's powerful stuff. What would forget if I could? (If I remember right -- no pun intended -- in his memoir "A Sort of Life," Graham Greene speaks of a toad beneath a rock. It's a metaphor for something he wishes he could forget. No matter how hard he tried, though, and no matter how many years had passed, the urge rose within him to lift the rock and see if the toad was still there. To recall the memory.)
Most of all, what haunts me most about "The Antidote" is what it reveals and suggests about memory and the careless ways we treat history and fact. There’s a line — it's almost a throwaway — that caught me up: “The past was not so sacrosanct, I discovered. You could simply make more up.”
These words speak powerfully of our own time: The battles currently being fought over what will be taught in schools and memorialized in museums and by statues and the names of streets and schools. What will/must not be taught but be erased and deleted. Stories meant to enlighten are replaced by stories that hide or manipulate or undermine what is real. In the Antidote, a character belatedly learns about the people who lived on this land before the Whites came: the Pawnee, Otto, Lakota, and others. The dust storms themselves act as metaphors for the cost of this erasure of the past: "When many thousands of us decide to forget the same truths, what happens? Look at what is happening to the soil without roots. We are the children of these crimes of memory, and we go on committing them.”
It's a powerful point, one that not everyone in Uz is grateful to be reminded of.
Writing this, I can't help but think Orwell’s well-known stern pronouncement in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “Who controls the past controls the future… Who controls the present controls the past.” Indeed. Big Brother removed facts from photos, changed what was in the historical record, and people came to believe what they were told to believe. In "The Antidote," this same process finds expression in the person of the prairie witch. "People really believe these lies you pour into them! Won the state spelling bee. Survived a shoot-out. Reconciled with a brother. Whatever you whisper into this contraption becomes real to them. No different than their other memories.” Truth and falsehood become interchangeable. What is not truly remembered can be made into something else entirely.
Around the time I was reading “The Antidote” an Executive Order was issued by the Trump White House. It read: “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Very soon after the order was issued, books were taken off the shelves of the library at West Point, the head librarian of the Library of Congress was dismissed, experts in various fields were fired, the Gulf of Mexico was renamed the Gulf of America, the Department of Education was dismantled, and schools and libraries were threatened with defunding if they didn’t follow certain rules with their curricula. The Executive Order was titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
Somehow — miraculously — “The Antidote” captures and comments on all this without being pedantic or overbearing, without sacrificing Story to Message. The book that I almost put down is now a favorite.
Thanks to Knopf and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
July 9, 2025
. . . no sooner did I utter a word than I forgot what I'd only just said. It felt like crossing a river and looking back to discover the bridge I'd been standing on had vanished. I spoke in a torrent without considering what I was saying, and once I'd begun, I felt like a hooked fish getting jerked along. Then the story released me and I was done . . . A beautiful spaciousness had replaced---what? I did not care a bit that it was gone.
The Antidote is a Prairie Witch; she's also known as a "vault" - a "women who by some occult art" can "store men's memories outside of their bodies" - relieving them of the guilt they feel over sins like adultery, and crimes like rape and murder. But, the book involves SO MUCH more than that. It's an all-encompassing historical fiction/fantasy saga that makes for a thoroughly engrossing read. Russell conjures some wonderful, memorable characters : the witch, Harp, his niece Asphodel, and Cleo Allfrey, a government photographer sent to make Nebraska look more appealing to possible settlers.
Her magical tale definitely sent me running to buy every book of Karen Russell's that I don't already own.
One of my favorites of the year, and highly recommended.
There is no safe way to remove chapters from the book of one's life. You cannot wait until there is more time, more money, more safety to recollect the past.
Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the read.
The Antidote is a Prairie Witch; she's also known as a "vault" - a "women who by some occult art" can "store men's memories outside of their bodies" - relieving them of the guilt they feel over sins like adultery, and crimes like rape and murder. But, the book involves SO MUCH more than that. It's an all-encompassing historical fiction/fantasy saga that makes for a thoroughly engrossing read. Russell conjures some wonderful, memorable characters : the witch, Harp, his niece Asphodel, and Cleo Allfrey, a government photographer sent to make Nebraska look more appealing to possible settlers.
Her magical tale definitely sent me running to buy every book of Karen Russell's that I don't already own.
One of my favorites of the year, and highly recommended.
There is no safe way to remove chapters from the book of one's life. You cannot wait until there is more time, more money, more safety to recollect the past.
Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the read.
April 6, 2025
This was my first Karen Russell book, and I was really impressed by how big and ambitious it was. It mixes so many genres — speculative historical fiction, magical realism, climate fiction, mystery, and even some historical commentary.
That said, the sheer number of narrators kind of threw me off. I think the emotional impact would’ve hit harder if the focus had been narrower. With fewer perspectives, I would’ve felt more connected to the story instead of just watching it from the sidelines.
Antonina Rossie — the prairie witch or "The Antidote" — was my favourite character. The idea of someone who holds everyone else’s secrets but can’t remember them herself, becoming the vessel for other people’s trauma, is really unique. By turning forgetting into a physical character, Russell shows us the cost of trying to erase pain. She suggests we can’t forget without consequences — that pain and memory are things we need to carry with us to stay human. And she takes it even further, reminding us how dangerous it is to forget the wrongs of the past.
I wanted to love this book, but I only liked it. I admired its ideas more than I actually felt them. I think, for me, this is one of those cases where less might’ve been more.
That said, the sheer number of narrators kind of threw me off. I think the emotional impact would’ve hit harder if the focus had been narrower. With fewer perspectives, I would’ve felt more connected to the story instead of just watching it from the sidelines.
Antonina Rossie — the prairie witch or "The Antidote" — was my favourite character. The idea of someone who holds everyone else’s secrets but can’t remember them herself, becoming the vessel for other people’s trauma, is really unique. By turning forgetting into a physical character, Russell shows us the cost of trying to erase pain. She suggests we can’t forget without consequences — that pain and memory are things we need to carry with us to stay human. And she takes it even further, reminding us how dangerous it is to forget the wrongs of the past.
I wanted to love this book, but I only liked it. I admired its ideas more than I actually felt them. I think, for me, this is one of those cases where less might’ve been more.
July 25, 2025
I found this too try-hard. Too much noise, too little bite. I feel like this was trying to teach me something and that was its only goal. I appreciate a good magical realism, but this felt random. Swveral of these characters thought and acted like they were in 2025 instead of the Dust Bowl era they’re supposed to be in. I don’t know why but that really irked me.
This novel was all over the place totally and structurally. I’ll admit that the last quarter was the best part, but it was too late for me by then.
Cheers to all of you who felt differently. We can’t always be on the same team.
This novel was all over the place totally and structurally. I’ll admit that the last quarter was the best part, but it was too late for me by then.
Cheers to all of you who felt differently. We can’t always be on the same team.
December 1, 2025
Karen Russell uses the historic Black Sunday dust storm as the backdrop for her interwoven, intergenerational, and inter-temporal slice of American history – complete with a prairie witch who can unburden her patients from painful memories, a sentient scarecrow, murder, mayhem, dust, and basketball. Russell’s dust-choked world is perfectly rendered with beautiful prose and well-researched detail, the heavy dose of magical realism seamlessly woven into this historical-fiction tale and bringing unexpected life to a barren world.
She unpacks the “collapse of memory” in fascinating ways, offering the perspectives of the land and its collective inhabitants – each of them ill-informed, or at the very least, ill-at-ease, shaped by forces they cannot fully comprehend.
The Antidote has all the makings of a modern American classic, and I know it will stick with me for a good long while.
My thanks to my public library for providing me with a post-release copy in exchange nothing at all!
Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Bluesky
She unpacks the “collapse of memory” in fascinating ways, offering the perspectives of the land and its collective inhabitants – each of them ill-informed, or at the very least, ill-at-ease, shaped by forces they cannot fully comprehend.
The Antidote has all the makings of a modern American classic, and I know it will stick with me for a good long while.
My thanks to my public library for providing me with a post-release copy in exchange nothing at all!
Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Bluesky
March 27, 2025
Loved it!
May 6, 2025
Skip this book and just read the Land Lost Acknowledgment and Author’s Note. That’s where the good stuff is. The other 400+ pages of this book try to do too much and, as a result, do way too little. Trying to capture every single meaningful issue imaginable - racism, climate change, the LGBTQIA+ community, the Vietnam War and untreated PTSD, the complexities of grief, historical fiction to include the Dust Bowl, the New Deal, the Indian Removal Act, sterilization scandal, and history of Indian Schools, the near extinction of buffalo, the horrors exacted on the Polish during WW2, AND the abuses against unwed mothers in America through the mid-1900s, all in a package of magical realism, WITH an eye toward modern day parallels - resulted in a book that was tedious, underdeveloped, lacked any meaningful character development, and nearly wholly eradicated the impact it was intended to have. Disappointing.
Also: animal violence warning in the prologue and page 9.
Also: animal violence warning in the prologue and page 9.
October 13, 2025
Set against the choking dust and despair of the 1930s Dust Bowl, The Antidote blends history and the supernatural in a really creative way. It opens during “Black Sunday,” a real storm from 1935, and at its center is the prairie witch (the Antidote) of Uz, Nebraska. The witch serves as a “vault” for her customer’s secrets and memories so they can feel free of their guilt and move on. But what happens when someone wants their memories back? And they are no longer there?
Told through four vivid perspectives—including the witch, her apprentice Dell, Dell’s uncle Harp, and Cleo, a photographer with a magical camera. We also get a few thoughts from a scarecrow from Harp’s farm. Russell makes the surreal feel strangely real. And the way she describes the climate is so intense that I could feel the grit. The novel shows how much the land and its people have suffered. It touches on guilt, responsibility, and the painful history of the Pawnee who were pushed from their home. Russell makes us feel how that history still lingers—and how one story can easily cover up another.
The pacing slows a bit during the witch’s and town’s backstory, but the world is so textured and alive that I didn’t mind drifting along. There’s also a mystery behind a string of murders that was interesting, but there was a bit about a confession that I found too easy. The Antidote is haunting, imaginative, and deeply human—a reminder that the past never truly stays buried. I kept thinking about how history repeats itself, and how the things we try to bury—both personal and collective—always find their way back to the surface. I hadn’t read Russell’s work before, but I will add Swamplandia! to my list.
4.25 stars
February 22, 2025
The Antidote is a work of historical fiction interwoven with magical realism that covers a period in 1935 in Nebraska, between two remarkable weather events, the Black Sunday dust storm and a subsequent torrential downpour that flooded the area. The story is told primarily from four different perspectives in alternating chapters.
I loved Russell's Swamplandia!, and this book, at its best moments, shines with her beautiful prose. These moments mostly derive from her beautiful descriptions of nature as a force. Readers can truly picture living in Uz, Nebraska and suffering under the challenging conditions.
Unfortunately, on the flip side, all four storytellers really speak in the same voice. Each chapter has a name in the heading, so it's not really an issue from the standpoint of following the plot, but the characters don't really come fully to life.
On the flip side, the touches of magical realism (something I normally don't love) were very creative and definitely were the most interesting part of the storytelling. Prairie witches take on confessions that wipe the confessor's memory clean. Scarecrows have thoughts. Cats seek retribution. A camera takes photos of the past and the future. So creative and definitely each element contributed to the plot and was not a simple aside.
The story has a very strong social justice orientation. It's not subtle. Covering the environment, colonialism, the stealing of Indian lands, the foibles of the legal system, and the mistreatment of unwed mothers all in one tale makes for a heaviness that really wasn't alleviated in any way by the editing.
The ending is dramatic, and in some respects very touching. But it's a long slow trek to get there.
I do see that this is a book that might win some prizes. So if you are a literary fiction reader who likes to be up on prize winning fiction, you may want to get to it.
I loved Russell's Swamplandia!, and this book, at its best moments, shines with her beautiful prose. These moments mostly derive from her beautiful descriptions of nature as a force. Readers can truly picture living in Uz, Nebraska and suffering under the challenging conditions.
Unfortunately, on the flip side, all four storytellers really speak in the same voice. Each chapter has a name in the heading, so it's not really an issue from the standpoint of following the plot, but the characters don't really come fully to life.
On the flip side, the touches of magical realism (something I normally don't love) were very creative and definitely were the most interesting part of the storytelling. Prairie witches take on confessions that wipe the confessor's memory clean. Scarecrows have thoughts. Cats seek retribution. A camera takes photos of the past and the future. So creative and definitely each element contributed to the plot and was not a simple aside.
The story has a very strong social justice orientation. It's not subtle. Covering the environment, colonialism, the stealing of Indian lands, the foibles of the legal system, and the mistreatment of unwed mothers all in one tale makes for a heaviness that really wasn't alleviated in any way by the editing.
The ending is dramatic, and in some respects very touching. But it's a long slow trek to get there.
I do see that this is a book that might win some prizes. So if you are a literary fiction reader who likes to be up on prize winning fiction, you may want to get to it.
February 23, 2025
The Antidote is a Great American Novel and my kind of historical fiction. Beautifully written, weird, and deeply moving. The Antidote is bookended by two very real weather disasters in Nebraska - the 1935 dust storm referred to as “Black Sunday” and the flooding of the Republican River after 24 inches of rain in 24 hours soon after. We have a cast of incredible characters: a Prairie Witch who can absorb and store her customer’s memories forever or until they want them back, an uncle and niece grieving in different ways, a photographer whose camera can capture things not yet there and reveal past truths, and a scarecrow with very human thoughts. That won’t be everyone, but I loved it.
That strange cast of characters made this book hard for me to put down. Every point of view was interesting and had something to say. Memory is at play in every section, and as a whole, Karen Russell is critiquing the amnesia that falls over those history deems the “good guys” and she does this in some many singular and profound ways. One of my favorite booksellers turned away from this one because of the animal cruelty, and yes, it’s there and it’s hard, and it also serves a purpose.
This book left me filled with hope and full body chills. It’s unlike anything I’ve read and I absolutely loved it. I’ll never think about memory the same. Thank you @aaknopf for the chance to read this ahead of its March 11th publication.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
That strange cast of characters made this book hard for me to put down. Every point of view was interesting and had something to say. Memory is at play in every section, and as a whole, Karen Russell is critiquing the amnesia that falls over those history deems the “good guys” and she does this in some many singular and profound ways. One of my favorite booksellers turned away from this one because of the animal cruelty, and yes, it’s there and it’s hard, and it also serves a purpose.
This book left me filled with hope and full body chills. It’s unlike anything I’ve read and I absolutely loved it. I’ll never think about memory the same. Thank you @aaknopf for the chance to read this ahead of its March 11th publication.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 2, 2025
The Antidote by Karen Russell is a tale growing out of the 1930s prairies where the land was dried to dust and the people were losing whatever hope they might have had. Then came Black Sunday, a famous day where a storm of dust turned day to night. We witness this event through the senses of several people in the small town of Uz, Nebraska. It’s hard to describe this story in conventional terms: the setting is real but otherworldly; the characters are human but the prairie witch does have her “other skill”-relieving others of the weight of their memories; the government program photographer has the quantum camera; then there seems to be a sentient Scarecrow; oh, and there’s a serial killer around too.
Memory becomes a commodity, untrustworthy or perhaps changed. So too with history, personal and community. There is magical prose in this novel and there are magical events. Time becomes fluid and the story of the settlement of the plains is relived. Russell has created an amazing vision of a town and people trying to survive in a hostile world without knowing or acknowledging their own part in past hostility.
The chapters alternate among these several narrators which works well to advance the story, the action and the magic of the entire work. These characters are so full of life, so real, that I miss them now. Definitely recommended.
Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for an eARC of this book in return for an honest review.
Memory becomes a commodity, untrustworthy or perhaps changed. So too with history, personal and community. There is magical prose in this novel and there are magical events. Time becomes fluid and the story of the settlement of the plains is relived. Russell has created an amazing vision of a town and people trying to survive in a hostile world without knowing or acknowledging their own part in past hostility.
The chapters alternate among these several narrators which works well to advance the story, the action and the magic of the entire work. These characters are so full of life, so real, that I miss them now. Definitely recommended.
Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for an eARC of this book in return for an honest review.
June 19, 2025
This was an interesting reading experience- one that I wanted to sit with for a few days before shaping a review.
I know Karen Russell is a beloved author, and that this book is highly anticipated for many. I confess that I hadn't read anything of hers previously, but I loved the premise (and the cover? come on!)
It was a little hard to get into, initially. I think I struggled for about 50-60 pages. But then I loved it! I thought the writing was stunning, the plot engaging, and the characters were perfectly fleshed out. This went on for about 200 pages...and then I started to struggle, again.
I think this book suffered from occasionally biting off more than it could chew. I still liked the book overall, and will think about a few of the characters often. Do I wish it had been just a pinch shorter, and that it meandered just a little bit less? Yes. Do with that what you will!
Edit 06/18 : I can’t stop thinking about this book almost half a year later and even find myself wanting to reread it. Yes it’s dense, but I do think it’s an ultimately special book. Bumping up to four stars!
I know Karen Russell is a beloved author, and that this book is highly anticipated for many. I confess that I hadn't read anything of hers previously, but I loved the premise (and the cover? come on!)
It was a little hard to get into, initially. I think I struggled for about 50-60 pages. But then I loved it! I thought the writing was stunning, the plot engaging, and the characters were perfectly fleshed out. This went on for about 200 pages...and then I started to struggle, again.
I think this book suffered from occasionally biting off more than it could chew. I still liked the book overall, and will think about a few of the characters often. Do I wish it had been just a pinch shorter, and that it meandered just a little bit less? Yes. Do with that what you will!
Edit 06/18 : I can’t stop thinking about this book almost half a year later and even find myself wanting to reread it. Yes it’s dense, but I do think it’s an ultimately special book. Bumping up to four stars!
November 5, 2025
**2025 National Book Award Finalist**
Antonina Teresa Rossi is the prairie witch for the town of Uz, Nebraska. She calls herself ‘the Antidote’ and her business sign reads ‘a panacea for every ailment from heartburn to nightmares.’ Townspeople come to her to deposit memories they want to be relieved of or to protect. They are given receipts and can return someday to withdraw their deposits. But when a huge dust storm hits the town on Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, Antonina realizes all those memories stored in her ‘vault’ are gone.
The prologue of the book tells about one such ‘deposit.’ It's a horrific memory belonging to Harp Oletsky, the son of one of the original Polish immigrants to settle in Uz. In his memory, hundreds of wild jackrabbits have been herded into a fenced pen and the men of Uz are systematically killing them with clubs because they’ve been decimating their wheat crops. Harp’s father puts a club into his six-year-old son’s hands, urging him to kill the last one still alive…
There are several remarkable characters, like Antonina and Harp, and the story alternates between several points of view. There’s also Asphodel, Harp’s niece who comes to live with him after her mother, Lada, is murdered and left in a ditch. Dell loves basketball and is determined to help her team win the state championship. And there’s Cleo Allfrey, a young black photographer, who has been sent to record farm life for the New Deal and the Resettlement Administration’s Historical Section. The camera she finds at a pawnshop records more than she herself sees through the view finder. There are also chapters from a cat and sentient inanimate object! By now, you probably realize the book has a heavy dose of magical realism mixed in with its historical fiction.
I eagerly began reading this novel, a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award, but I admit I stumbled over the first 25% of the book because of the animal cruelty, the unusual character names and strange situations, and the confusing changes in point of view. Slowly but surely, however, the gorgeous writing and plot drew me in. There’s drama, tension, danger, a bit of mystery and yes, great characterizations and magical realism. This story of historical fiction also holds up a mirror to see what's happening now.
Antonina Teresa Rossi is the prairie witch for the town of Uz, Nebraska. She calls herself ‘the Antidote’ and her business sign reads ‘a panacea for every ailment from heartburn to nightmares.’ Townspeople come to her to deposit memories they want to be relieved of or to protect. They are given receipts and can return someday to withdraw their deposits. But when a huge dust storm hits the town on Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, Antonina realizes all those memories stored in her ‘vault’ are gone.
The prologue of the book tells about one such ‘deposit.’ It's a horrific memory belonging to Harp Oletsky, the son of one of the original Polish immigrants to settle in Uz. In his memory, hundreds of wild jackrabbits have been herded into a fenced pen and the men of Uz are systematically killing them with clubs because they’ve been decimating their wheat crops. Harp’s father puts a club into his six-year-old son’s hands, urging him to kill the last one still alive…
There are several remarkable characters, like Antonina and Harp, and the story alternates between several points of view. There’s also Asphodel, Harp’s niece who comes to live with him after her mother, Lada, is murdered and left in a ditch. Dell loves basketball and is determined to help her team win the state championship. And there’s Cleo Allfrey, a young black photographer, who has been sent to record farm life for the New Deal and the Resettlement Administration’s Historical Section. The camera she finds at a pawnshop records more than she herself sees through the view finder. There are also chapters from a cat and sentient inanimate object! By now, you probably realize the book has a heavy dose of magical realism mixed in with its historical fiction.
I eagerly began reading this novel, a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award, but I admit I stumbled over the first 25% of the book because of the animal cruelty, the unusual character names and strange situations, and the confusing changes in point of view. Slowly but surely, however, the gorgeous writing and plot drew me in. There’s drama, tension, danger, a bit of mystery and yes, great characterizations and magical realism. This story of historical fiction also holds up a mirror to see what's happening now.
April 5, 2025
THE ANTIDOTE takes place in the small town of Uz, Nebraska during the devastating Dust Bowl era. The characters followed include a Polish farmer, his orphan niece, a “Prairie Witch” who people entrust with their secrets, a New Deal photographer, and a scarecrow. Yes, a scarecrow. There’s a touch of magical realism to the story but it works in the book’s favor rather than detracting from the important issues explored.
I figured when I picked up the book the struggles farmers faced during this time period would be addressed and it was, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what THE ANTIDOTE has to offer. A bit of Polish history is included in the story. Land ownership and the treatment of unwed mothers are just a few of the other topics examined.
It took me awhile before I settled into a good reading groove but I’m thankful I was patient as it paid off. A fascinating read chock full of substance.
Thank you Knopf for sending me a free copy!
I figured when I picked up the book the struggles farmers faced during this time period would be addressed and it was, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what THE ANTIDOTE has to offer. A bit of Polish history is included in the story. Land ownership and the treatment of unwed mothers are just a few of the other topics examined.
It took me awhile before I settled into a good reading groove but I’m thankful I was patient as it paid off. A fascinating read chock full of substance.
Thank you Knopf for sending me a free copy!
December 19, 2024
This novel was very different from "Swamplandia!" which I remember as being very dark. This is also unsettling, but in a different way: "The Antidote" is historical fiction mixed with magical realism, and deals with very stark topics of racism, bodily autonomy and the criminal justice system, among others. But you're also treated to fun things, like the point-of-view of a scarecrow. Although, those chapters were too short for me, even if they were kept that way for the sake of mystery. He had a head full of straw, after all.
I loved the concept of a “Vault,” meaning a witch that you can go to and tell her a painful memory that you want to forget, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” style. Only this time you are able to return years later with a receipt and get the memory back, if you choose to. The witches serve as a sort of memory bank. (Though they themselves blackout during the sessions and have no recollection of what information they’re holding onto.) What a cool idea! My favorite character in the book was "The Antidote," herself. But the chapters detailing her backstory at the home for unwed mothers were really tough to get through and reminded me a lot of Grady Hendrix’s “Witchcraft For Wayward Girls.” I know that stories about women and girls being horribly abused are frightfully relevant, but frankly I need a break from them right now.
This story is full of rich, multi-dimensional, vivid characters. (The villain in this story, holy shit. What a scumbag.) I also really liked Cleo Allfrey, the photographer. The way she represented optimism in the face of hopelessness, and the possibility of a brighter future. My biggest joy in reading this was discovering how the various people involved in the plot would end up running into each other. I loved their interactions and I did end up caring about their fates. The last third of the book had me so stressed out! The journey was a rewarding one, in the end. I’ve gotten used to reading quickly and this is the sort of book that requires you to slow down and focus. It feels a lot like Faulkner. One of my favorite required reads for school was “As I Lay Dying” and this reminded me of that. This sort of book is not my typical genre; I don't really go for anything with a historical feel to it. But I trusted the author and I do love magical realism. It turned out to be a good choice! The character work alone was admirable, and so was the prose.
If you are inclined towards audiobooks, I think "The Antidote" would likely be a great listen. The language felt so lyrical, like the various narrators were really telling their stories.
I do want to emphasize that it can be an emotional read, so heed the trigger warnings. The animal stuff especially was upsetting. This book is both bad and good for cat lovers! Also, a nitpick: There is an important chapter about a confession or “deposit” made to a witch that goes on forever and I couldn’t believe that even with magic a person would be able to store something that lengthy and detailed in her subconscious.
Thank you to Netgalley and to the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own.
3.5 rounded up to a 4!
Biggest TW: Animal harm/death, Misogyny, Suicide, Racism, Domestic abuse, Sexual Assault, Mention of child death/Miscarriage, Lengthy chapter about the Holocaust and murder of Native Americans
I loved the concept of a “Vault,” meaning a witch that you can go to and tell her a painful memory that you want to forget, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” style. Only this time you are able to return years later with a receipt and get the memory back, if you choose to. The witches serve as a sort of memory bank. (Though they themselves blackout during the sessions and have no recollection of what information they’re holding onto.) What a cool idea! My favorite character in the book was "The Antidote," herself. But the chapters detailing her backstory at the home for unwed mothers were really tough to get through and reminded me a lot of Grady Hendrix’s “Witchcraft For Wayward Girls.” I know that stories about women and girls being horribly abused are frightfully relevant, but frankly I need a break from them right now.
This story is full of rich, multi-dimensional, vivid characters. (The villain in this story, holy shit. What a scumbag.) I also really liked Cleo Allfrey, the photographer. The way she represented optimism in the face of hopelessness, and the possibility of a brighter future. My biggest joy in reading this was discovering how the various people involved in the plot would end up running into each other. I loved their interactions and I did end up caring about their fates. The last third of the book had me so stressed out! The journey was a rewarding one, in the end. I’ve gotten used to reading quickly and this is the sort of book that requires you to slow down and focus. It feels a lot like Faulkner. One of my favorite required reads for school was “As I Lay Dying” and this reminded me of that. This sort of book is not my typical genre; I don't really go for anything with a historical feel to it. But I trusted the author and I do love magical realism. It turned out to be a good choice! The character work alone was admirable, and so was the prose.
If you are inclined towards audiobooks, I think "The Antidote" would likely be a great listen. The language felt so lyrical, like the various narrators were really telling their stories.
I do want to emphasize that it can be an emotional read, so heed the trigger warnings. The animal stuff especially was upsetting. This book is both bad and good for cat lovers! Also, a nitpick: There is an important chapter about a confession or “deposit” made to a witch that goes on forever and I couldn’t believe that even with magic a person would be able to store something that lengthy and detailed in her subconscious.
Thank you to Netgalley and to the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own.
3.5 rounded up to a 4!
Biggest TW: Animal harm/death, Misogyny, Suicide, Racism, Domestic abuse, Sexual Assault, Mention of child death/Miscarriage, Lengthy chapter about the Holocaust and murder of Native Americans
March 6, 2025
I believe we have a choice in all this. There should be a word that means both “blessed” and “cursed,” I have often thought. Maybe that word is “freedom.” Maybe that word is “us.” from The Antidote by Karen Russell
In 1930s Dust Bowl Kansas, four people learn dark secrets. With the story shifting between these characters and their past and present, dark secrets unfold.
There is the farmer dwelling on the legacy of his inheritance. his immigrant ancestor settling on Native American land. His orphaned niece, a teenage basketball star whose mother was murdered. The woman called the Prairie Witch who takes men’s deepest secrets into her vault. A photographer with a magical camera that shows what has been or will be.
The farmer has been spared by the black cloud of dust that had decimated Uz, his field still green under blue skies. His niece and her team survived the storm en route to the championship game. The Prairie Witch lost her power to retreat into the Vault, and the WPA photographer can’t take a photograph to satisfy her boss.
The town sheriff has provided a suspect for a series of murders, ensuring his reelection. One of the victims was the farmer’s sister and niece’s mother. He fears the Vault for the secrets he has given her to lock away. When the photographer develops photographs of the secrets, the women and the farmer decide to confront the town.
An original blend of historical fiction and magical realism, the novel questions if we can tolerate the truth of our past, accept our contribution to the problems we have created. For these characters it is the degradation of the land, the genocide of Native Americans, murders to cover up a crime. The story is a mirror, making us aware that we have our own legacy for which we must take responsibility.
“Are these photographs of what did happen? What will happen?” “I don’t know myself,” she said. […] But I’ll tell you this much: I suspect we have more choices than we know.” from The Antidote by Karen Russell
Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.
In 1930s Dust Bowl Kansas, four people learn dark secrets. With the story shifting between these characters and their past and present, dark secrets unfold.
There is the farmer dwelling on the legacy of his inheritance. his immigrant ancestor settling on Native American land. His orphaned niece, a teenage basketball star whose mother was murdered. The woman called the Prairie Witch who takes men’s deepest secrets into her vault. A photographer with a magical camera that shows what has been or will be.
The farmer has been spared by the black cloud of dust that had decimated Uz, his field still green under blue skies. His niece and her team survived the storm en route to the championship game. The Prairie Witch lost her power to retreat into the Vault, and the WPA photographer can’t take a photograph to satisfy her boss.
The town sheriff has provided a suspect for a series of murders, ensuring his reelection. One of the victims was the farmer’s sister and niece’s mother. He fears the Vault for the secrets he has given her to lock away. When the photographer develops photographs of the secrets, the women and the farmer decide to confront the town.
An original blend of historical fiction and magical realism, the novel questions if we can tolerate the truth of our past, accept our contribution to the problems we have created. For these characters it is the degradation of the land, the genocide of Native Americans, murders to cover up a crime. The story is a mirror, making us aware that we have our own legacy for which we must take responsibility.
“Are these photographs of what did happen? What will happen?” “I don’t know myself,” she said. […] But I’ll tell you this much: I suspect we have more choices than we know.” from The Antidote by Karen Russell
Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.
dnf
September 19, 2025DNF @50%
For whatever reason I just couldn’t quite get into the groove of this book. I really liked the setup and the setting, some interesting characters too! But there was a lot going on and I just felt like it would’ve been stronger if it was more streamlined for my taste.
For whatever reason I just couldn’t quite get into the groove of this book. I really liked the setup and the setting, some interesting characters too! But there was a lot going on and I just felt like it would’ve been stronger if it was more streamlined for my taste.
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