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Swamplandia! - Karen Russell
Swamplandia!
by: (author)
4.00 5
The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline and Swamplandia!, their island home in the Florida Everglades and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as The World of Darkness. Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve year old, must... show more
The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline and Swamplandia!, their island home in the Florida Everglades and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as The World of Darkness. Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve year old, must manage seventy gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief. Her mother, Swamplandia!'s legendary and beautiful star attraction, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; 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 in a last-ditch effort to keep the family afloat; and her father, the Chief, is AWOL. To save them, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine. Swamplandia! is a dark and mythic story, bursting with energy and an unstoppable inventiveness, by a writer with an astonishingly original and exuberant imagination.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9780701186029 (070118602X)
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Pages no: 336
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
moving under skies
moving under skies rated it
3.0 Swamplandia!
I can barely think about this except in opposition to The Tiger's Wife--I accidentally read them back-to-back, which really was a sad mistake. Not that Swamplandia! suffers in comparison: actually I think it's the better book, all things considered, and I feel bad for giving them the same rating and...
The Fault in Our Blogs
The Fault in Our Blogs rated it
4.0 Swamplandia!
http://thefaultinourblogs.blogspot.comLet's start off with the good. Russell has a very engaging style that makes the reader fill in the blanks. One of the cool things people have said about this novel is that depending on the mindset of the reader, it can be interpreted or classified many different...
Read All The Things! Reviews
Read All The Things! Reviews rated it
4.0 Swamplandia!
A family of alligator wrestlers goes on a quest to save their island theme park and themselves. Chief Bigtree, the father, is delusional about the future of the park. Ossie, the older sister, needs to get to the underworld to marry a ghost. Kiwi, the older brother, is trying to survive on the mainla...
Words of a Bibliophile
Words of a Bibliophile rated it
2.5 Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
This is a generally bizarre book about a family who runs a gator-wrestling island theme park and seems to overestimate the fame and grandeur of said park, which is becoming bankrupt. Alligators, vultures, ghosts and humans populate this novel, and I'm never sure whether the ghost part is supposed to...
The Book Frog
The Book Frog rated it
3.0 Swamplandia!
Swamplandia! is a novel by Karen Russell. Swamplandia! is also a place, one of Florida's Ten Thousand Islands, and a tourist attraction, and it's always written with an exclamation point, which never failed to amuse or touch me, depending on the context, throughout the book. Swamplandia! is rundown ...
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