Swamplandia!
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.5
(195)
Karen Russell
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The bravely imagined, wildly acclaimed debut novel from the author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove—about a thirteen year old girl who sets out on a mission through magical swamps to save her family. "Ms. Russell is one in a million.... A suspensfuly, deeply haunted book." —The New York TimesThirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness. As Ava embarks on her mission to save them all, we are drawn into a lush debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of reality.
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More Details:
Author
Karen Russell
Pages
336
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published Date
2011-02-01
ISBN
0307595447 9780307595447
Community ReviewsSee all
"Wrong version; I added French version by mistake. Can you please remove this entry?"
L T
Likewise Tagging
"I really wanted to like this book, but I just didn't. By the end I just wanted it to be over."
L
Lauren
"Incredibly imaginative and beautifully written. <br/><br/>Many reviews seem to bemoan a return at the end to difficult realities that characters are facing and downgrade the overall rating as a result. While this may be hard as a reader to face, it is very well done. And it moves to celebrate a more human, real strength and hope. <br/><br/>I highly recommend this book. We are lured, as Ava is, into a magical world where everything is possible, and we get to experience the difficulties of understanding life may not be what it seems, but there is a more difficult, less flashy, magic still."
E B
Emily Berigan
"Karen Russell is an engaging, young writer. Gators, grit, and family. Entertaining."
Jay Werth
