The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve year-old, must battle to save it. After the death of her beautiful and legendary mother, Swamplandia!, Ava's island home in the Florida Everglades, is under threat from a nearby competitor; her sister Osceola has eloped with a ghost, her Grandpa Sawtooth has been sent to the mainland to an old folk's home, her brother has secretly defected to The World of Darkness, and her father, the Chief, is AWOL... can a harrowing Odyssey to a perilpus part of the swamp keep that family finally afloat?
Recommend this book
Add your recommendation
Only registered users can recommend books. Please use the buttons below to either create a new account, or sign-in to an existing account.
Ms Russell has produces a rich and humid world of spirits and dreams, buzzing mosquitoes and prehistoric reptiles, baby-green cocoplums and marsh rabbits, and musty old tomes about heroes and spells. With Ava she has created a goofy and self-conscious girl who is young enough to hope that all darkness has an answering lightness. Inevitably she must learn otherwise. Swamplandia! is ultimately about the aching beauties of youth - the way life begins with such dumb sweetness, while the lessons that give it meaning lurk around each bend like terrifying gators in a mossy fragrant swamp. - The Economist
The tale of the two flyaway sisters proves lyrically powerful as it maps the enchanted but dangerous worlds that young minds can conjure to deal with grief. - Sunday Times
It's a wonderfully extravagant, eccentric story by a brilliant young writer with an amazing imagination. - The Times
I was looking forward to Swamplandia! and I wasn't disappointed. I found this novel beautifully written and very witty, yet often extremely sad too. - TheBookBag.com
The Miami-born writer renders the travails and delights of a...dreamlike world that leaves you intoxicated and slightly dishevelled - Monocle
When you start reading a book, it's either sink or swim. With Karen Russell's Swamplandia, set in the alligator-infested Florida Everglades, we dove right in and never came up for air... Russell deftly dips into several story lines. And though she trolls some pretty dark waters (abandonment, consumerism, hungry swamp things), there's magic in discovering how everyone stays afloat. - Daily Candy
Russell details peculiarities about the alligators (known as Seths) to fascinating effect and skillfully satirizes the greed and fraudulence of entertainment corporations. - Times Literary Supplement
The book certainly abounds in clever and striking images: alligators have 'icicle overbites' and Hilola's children 'watch her sink into her own face' as she dies of cancer. - Metro
Russell's primeval imaginings and gutsy language lurk long in the memory. - Independent
The novel packs a genuine punch - Daily Telegraph
[Russell] is certainly very talented...This novel has already received great reviews...and it's easy to see why. Many of her descriptions are quite dazzling - Guardian
Her imagination is undoubtedly of unbounded proportions, and she creates a refreshingly unique community and seductively charms the reader...[Russell] is a refreshing change from the usual. - Platform
Ava's narrative occupies fertile territory half-way between realism and fantasy, innocence and experience...Russell leaves just enough for us to question our reading of events, so that when the scales fall from Ava's eyes we are implicated in her naivety. - London Review of Books
We unanimously loved it - to the point where words like 'genius' and 'masterpiece' were being bandied around. With figurative language enriching every sentence, Russell effortlessly transports the reader. - Cambridgeshire Journal
This novel [is] beautifully written and very witty, yet often extremely sad too - Thebookbag.co.uk
On one level, this is a sweet, slightly sentimental comin-of-age story; on another, it is a postmodern satire - Guardian
Russell is really finding her feet with this one, making good on the promise of her eerie debut - Herald
A testament to a truly vivid imagination - Lady
Russell creats a vivid sense of how reality and fantasy can intertwine in a child's mind and become indistinguishable... What comes through most powerfully in Russell's fertile prose is the humid, mosquito-ridden atmosphere of the Florida swamp and the beguiling strangeness of the creatures - humans included - that make it their home - Observer
The novel is an experiment in how children's minds comprehend loss, and Ava is a compelling guide...Russell's strength is her use of language: each sentence is vividly rendered and the pages are as dense with images as the island is with life - The Times
By this author
About the Author
Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in the New Yorker's debut fiction issue, was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007, and was recently named one of New Yorker magazine's 20 Under 40.
