Russell constructed a novel underpinned by an elaborate embroidery of social, geological, historical, and environmental research on the impact of American Western expansion ... She effortlessly weaves in other characters whose unique gifts shed light on the lacunae of history ... If this sounds like a dense novel, you’re only halfway right. The book is threaded with more subplots and histories as well as characters than I can elaborate upon here. However, her sharp narrative grasp guides the reader from character to character as the book unfolds. Russell’s vivid characters retain an element of mystery, which speaks to the novel’s larger point.
A tempest of a tale ... This story is dazzlingly original and ambitious ... Pumped full of just enough magic to make it rise without bursting the bubble of our credulity ... The scale here is large ... Across the vast canvas of this novel, Russell aims for nothing less than a consideration of the role that intentional amnesia plays in American history and American life. To embark on the adventure of reading The Antidote is to place yourself under the enchanting and challenging care of a writer who is guilty of actual witchcraft.
Blends speculative and fantasy elements with rich language and vivid characters in an effort not to escape reality but to comment even more thoughtfully on it ... Submerges the reader in these characters’ inner lives and histories through short, dense chapters that alternate between their perspectives. Russell’s lyrical writing dazzles on every page ... Russell’s ambitious and exciting novel, like all good historical fiction, makes a powerful case for never forgetting. Erasure is a form of combat, but so is remembering.
Russell writes about fantastical events with plainspoken prose that makes us accept them surprisingly easily ... There’s a lot going on in The Antidote and one thing that happens because Russell takes her time is that her themes emerge gracefully.
Does not hit like a book for grown-ups ... Dewy-eyed and reductive moralizing ... The novel’s characters break down along a Marvel Comic Universe axis of good and evil, which makes them both unbelievable and not very interesting ... Any waves this novel makes will lap so gently against the conventions of contemporary fiction that they’ll barely be felt at all.
Russell's instrument — her language — is uncanny. Swathes of the spellbinding final third of this novel move deeply into the past ... Exhumes memories out of the collective national unconscious and invites us to see our history in full. There are, alas, no antidotes for history. Our consolations are found in writers like Russell who refract horror and wonder through their own strange looking glass, leaving us energized for that next astounding thing.
The most salient quality of The Antidote is the beauty and power of Russell’s writing, especially in documenting horrors ... Clearly the work of a writer with prodigious gifts. But every novelist with a long enough career will ultimately produce a book where they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, or chewed and swallowed something they should have spat out. Despite The Antidote’s laudable ambitions and interesting conception, I’m afraid, for Russell, this is that book.
Athought-provoking piece of speculative historical fiction, transforming aspects of American history into folklore while still examining the many wrongs of said history. Utilizing numerous point of view characters...Russell captures how tenuous the truth is and how our capacity to forget history is what leads to ugliness and injustice in our world. On the flip side, the few drawbacks of The Antidote also regard this plurality of both voices and ideas, as well as the question of taking on too much in a single narrative ... Russell’s prose is as sharp as ever. Her capacity for detailed imagery while maintaining an easy, readable pace must be commended.
A deeply imagined blend of gritty realism and alluring fantasy about the American Midwest in the Dust Bowl era, will amply reward readers for their patience ... Russell has created both a tender story of how our memories sustain us in the face of significant loss and a frank reckoning with a painful period of American history.
An ardent work of encompassing and compassionate historical fiction supercharged with her signature imaginative, astutely calibrated supernatural twists. A dramatic and uncanny tale of the drastic consequences of our destruction of nature and Indigenous communities.
The pain of The Antidote is that it reminds you that you are only one person, and one voice does nothing to break a cycle of willful ignorance. But the joy of the novel is its immense sense of gratitude, as powerful a force as fear and wind, but quieter in its orchestrations. Gratitude is what transforms the lives of the witch, the farmer, the basketballer and the photographer, each of whom finds themselves out of step with the dominant practice of forgetting. Russell’s novel is deeply researched, with a narrative that is propulsive and consuming, and characters who are tender and complicated.
The book also includes photographs with faces that have black circles covering them, lending a thought-provoking and visceral quality to the narrative ... Brilliant, barbed.
