I’d rather translate literary criticism into Sanskrit than reread the novel I am about to bash. It was recommended by Maureen Corrigan on NPR and several bloggers and reviewers on Best Books of 2025 Lists.

Karen Russell’s The Antidote.  Dustbowl magic realism with a dose of Hallmark movie.  A compelling novel, set mostly in Nebraska in 1935, about a girl basketball player, a prairie witch, a photographer with a magic camera, and a sweet-natured farmer whose crops survive the Black Sunday dust storm.  

REASON TO READ:  Russell’s dark history of second- and third-generation settlers in Nebraska, many of whom are Polish refugees, is stark, well- researched, and terrifying.  Persecuted by the Germans in Poland, the first settlers in the 19th century ignore the injustice against Indians. They are already wretched on the infertile land.  Many witness so much violence that they are driven to confide their nightmarish memories to a prairie witch, who goes into a trance and erases the memories from their minds. The second- and third generations struggle to make sense of the corruption and desperation in their town. There is little help out there, even from FDR’s special programs.

REASON TO KEEP READING.  It’s a bit like reading Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, one of the best but grimmest novel I’ve read. Russell’s tightly-woven narrative depicts another harrowing history, but it turns into a Hallmark movie in the last hundred pages.

REASON TO STOP READING:  The tone changes to a kind of earnest mellowness in order to engineer a happy ending.   I like a happy ending, but this one feels false.  (I did read it to the end, though.)

I grant this 4 stars out of 5, which is awfully good, except that I’ve given the other books I’ve read this month  5 stars!  The Antidote could have been great. if the ending hadn’t been so unlikely.