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Swamplandia!

by Karen Russell (Goodreads Author)

3.18 of 5 stars 3.18 · rating details · 21,672 ratings · 4,432 reviews

A New York Times Top 10 Book of 2011

Thirteen-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 a...more

ebook, 335 pages

Published February 1st 2011 by Vintage

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Jan 04, 2012 oriana rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2011, why-werent-you-better

Hey, it's my latest (and meanest) review for CCLaP! I also put this on my CCLaP best-of-2011 list—for best total disappointment.

Perhaps Swamplandia! is a case of being careful what you wish for. Perhaps it was a back-handed slap against wish-fulfillment. Perhaps it should force me to reexamine deeply held prejudices, or at least preferences, which would make me grow as a reader and a person, ultimately making me more open-minded, forgiving, and calm.

Or maybe it’s just a bad book.

Let’s start with...more

217 likes · like · see review

Apr 13, 2011 Sarah Ryburn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

**** 3/4

getting into this story was a bit of a task. somewhere around page 89, however, i realized that i didn't want to put it down. russell is an excellent writer, despite the occasional split infinitive (personal pet peeve), and her story sparked some truly rich and engaging discussion one particularly fine april evening. this is a novel that lends itself to discussion and not of the "i liked it when..." variety. russell's approach is subtle; she is a master of "showing rather than telling,"...more **** 3/4

getting into this story was a bit of a task. somewhere around page 89, however, i realized that i didn't want to put it down. russell is an excellent writer, despite the occasional split infinitive (personal pet peeve), and her story sparked some truly rich and engaging discussion one particularly fine april evening. this is a novel that lends itself to discussion and not of the "i liked it when..." variety. russell's approach is subtle; she is a master of "showing rather than telling," pairing terse, sometimes shockingly direct, dialogue (i.e. ava telling the birdman she loves him) with imaginative, meandering characterization. in the world of swamplandia!, plot always serves characterization so much so that i read with the persistent sensation of moving deeper into this island world, its strange mythology, and the collective psyche of its inhabitants in the turning of each page. the swamp came to life for me, springing out of the page; it's the dwelling place of monsters, "the seths," and of demigods, the bigtree clan who live among and subdue them (chief bigtree actually refers to the seths as "prehistoric monsters").

there is such complexity here––enough, surely, to fuel many more hours of discussion and countless paragraphs for this review. all the time that russell weaves her mythology, she plants quiet but insistent markers of the "human" realm-–chief bigtree's warning that alligators in the wild are not like the seths, a radio playing golden oldies deep within the boudaries of "the underworld," subtle markers rather than foreshadowing of the reckoning ava faces once it is no longer possible to "go on pretending" as the birdman suggests. this simultaneous tending to both her mythological world and the crushing realism that undermines and destroys it shows the hand of a masterful storyteller. i was completely drawn in and found myself as bewildered and confused as russell's characters to find that, in the end, the piper must be paid.

i will call the novel masterful; there is no doubt in my mind. russell misses five stars in my assessment due to an abrupt and murky ending. there is a hint of all coming out too well for these characters in the end, but i don't fault russell for this. narrative tension is a tricky thing, but russell balances it smoothly throughout a long and complex story, if it does get away from her a bit just at the end. i think she couldn't write a good story and escape the damage they must suffer at the death of such naive illusions. at the same time, i don't think she could stay true to her characters and destroy them completely. swamplandia appears larger than life to the bigtree children; life seems to require that their innocence be cut away, leaving them raw and bloodied with the wisdom of their experiences. there is strength in ava and ossie and kiwi; kiwi shows himself to be a survivor, to be capable of adaptation, and ava becomes an alligator wrestler in truth. ossie may seem frail and other-worldly, but ava comments that she has always been full of surprises, unlooked-for talents and abilities. so i am glad that russell did not surrender entirely to the altar of realism, and i agree that this family seems "somehow to be winning" in the midst of considerable losses. still, i find the ending "abrupt and murky." there are questions i want answered, but i don't necessarily want to know what happens next. in a way, an ending to the narrative seems needful once the characters accept that swamplandia is lost, yet ava's optimism seems remote and insubstantial. i wanted more assurance; i wanted some hint at how they really might win and not merely survive.

i've written before and simply will repeat that endings, really good ones, seem more difficult than beginnings or all that comes in the middle. i often forgive an author truly horrifying slips in the middle if her beginning hookes me well or his ending really satisfies. russell's beginning seems a bit sluggish, and her ending does not satisfy, but there is genuine craft in the 200+ pages that come between. (less)

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Mar 30, 2011 e rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2011

Review removed due to Amazon's acquisition of Goodreads.

10 likes · like · see review

Feb 29, 2012 Jenna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really wanted to like this book. It came with high praises and witty blurbs. It came with a cool cover. It started out fun and quirky: a family of alligator wrestlers living on a Florida island, running their own crazed theme park. But halfway into the story, I am stranded in the swampland. Stranded not by fierce monster gators, but by beautiful pointless writing with no movement toward either crisis or resolution. It's a mystery to me why this doesn't work, but it just doesn't. Beautifully wr...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Krok Zero rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: spring-2011

So where did Swamplandia! go wrong? Was it the point at which the narrative branches off into two tracks, following the separate adventures of the protagonist's wayward brother? Was it the inclusion of a play-within-the-play, suddenly covering the life story of a new character? Was it the general shift in tone from quirkily heartfelt family novel to weak magical-realism about ghosts? Or did the real trouble begin at conception, when promising young fictionist Karen Russell had the idea to expand...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Pattie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, gothic

Whenever I read a review on good reads that starts: "This was too dark" I just roll my eyes. Bring on the complexity, bring on the darkness. But this may have been too dark and sad even for me, not saved by an end that felt tacked-on. Darkness and sadness this deep needs some hint of humor to make it bearable, and this story is almost completely unrelievedly, unremittingly dark. (Well, okay, the World of
Darkness was pretty funny).

I loved "St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" and really,...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been revised and can be found at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

5 likes · like · see review

Dec 28, 2010 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Swamplandia! is its very own Rorschach test. A reader can see in it most anything he or she wants. Is it a terrifying supernatural thriller? A fast-paced adventure story? An elegiac narrative about a dysfunctional family slowly spinning out of control? A cautionary tale about the perils of being an outsider? Or a quirky and dream-like parable using the swamp as a mythic archetype?

In fact, it’s all these things. Yet above all else, Swamplandia! is a lavishly imagined and highly original coming-of...more Swamplandia! is its very own Rorschach test. A reader can see in it most anything he or she wants. Is it a terrifying supernatural thriller? A fast-paced adventure story? An elegiac narrative about a dysfunctional family slowly spinning out of control? A cautionary tale about the perils of being an outsider? Or a quirky and dream-like parable using the swamp as a mythic archetype?

In fact, it’s all these things. Yet above all else, Swamplandia! is a lavishly imagined and highly original coming-of-age story. Swamplandia! is the name of a faded, nearly bankrupt Everglades tourist attraction, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. Early on in the book, Hilola – the mother and star performer – dies shockingly young, of ovarian cancer, leaving the family unmoored. Their flamboyant father, Chief Bigtree, heads away to take care of “business” on the mainland, leaving the children undefended.

Left to their own devices, the three Bigtree teens react in different and dysfunctional ways. Nerdy older brother Kiwi, just 17, sneaks away in the dead of night to join the heavily-advertised competition, a themed amusement park called World of Darkness, where guests (known as “Lost Souls”) partake in the various “rings of hell.” His plan is to make money to save Swamplandia! from extinction, despite his meager wages and the jeering of other employees.

Osceloa, the middle girl, named for a Seminole Indian, falls under the spell of spiritualism, becoming more and more entranced with a young man Louis Thanksgiving…a ghost-figure who died during the Dredge and Fill Campaign of the 1930s. She mysteriously vanishes after leaving a note that she is running off to elope with him.

And that leaves 13-year-old Ava, the first-person narrator of the story. There is a poignancy about Ava, who sorely misses her mother, worries about Kiwi and Ossie, and dreams of taking her mother’s place as a top performer and saving the day. It is up to Ava to take care of the alligators (redubbed “Seths” by the Bigtrees); when a rare red Seth is born, he becomes her talisman and in ways, her alter ego. She will ultimately take her own harrowing journey with a guide known as the Bird Man, who takes her on both a physical and emotional odyssey right to the very gates of hell.

Karen Russell offers a profound knowledge of the world she creates – the hatching and care of the alligators, the imperiled swamp, the back-history (including the massacred Seminoles), the isolation and innate wisdom of those who live off the mainland. The swamp – the quagmire – that threatens to engulf the three siblings must be navigated for them to emerge whole and move on.

The writing style calls forth an early John Irving, Katherine Dunne, or John Kennedy Toole. The yearning for a reconnection with her mother – the haunting quality of the outsider – the beauty of some of the descriptions elevates Swamplandia! over many debut novels and makes Karen Russell a writer to watch.

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Mar 03, 2013 Jeffrey Mervosh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

Wow. I loved this book. It is certainly not for everyone, as it is deeply dark and tragic and switches between silliness and terror in the unclear haze of magical realism, but it is also evocative, captivating, and full of wonderfully vivid prose ruminating on love and the loss of childhood. One of the best books and strongest characters (Ava) I have encountered in some time.

Update: After two weeks to reflect and think about my review I've down-graded it to four stars. This isn't to take away fr...more

4 likes · like · see review

Nov 11, 2011 Karen! rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: aminal, chinese-food-binge-reading, history-ish-maybe, what-is-wrong-with-the-world

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I had completely forgotten that I had read this book. And then Goodreads recommended that I read it. Fail, Goodreads, Fail. Reviewing this book has prompted me to add a brand new bookshelf: "What is wrong with the world?!?!?!?!" Although, I think that the "?!?!?!" didn't make it. They are understood, I hope.

This is one of those books that you start out kind of liking: who doesn't want to read about an alligator park in Florida where the mother of 3 children is a phenomenal alligator wrestler. An...more

26 likes · like · see review

Apr 25, 2012 Karin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 18, 2011 A.J. Howard rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookshelf-fiction, finished-in-2011

Swamplandia! begs George Saunders references. Karen Russell shares Saunders fascination with the peculiar Americana of the tourist trap. The titular attraction here is the island home of the Bigtree Tribe, a family of eratz Indian alligator wrestlers. However, whereas the attractions become characters of Saunders' stories, Russell's characters are themselves the attractions of Swamplandia. Their faces appear on the billboards and promotional material and one of the attractions is a museum devote

...more

The narrator of much of the novel is Ava, the youngest of the Bigtree children. Russell does a pretty deft trick with this voice. Ava's narrative hints at magical realism but actually depicts an adolescent's disenchantment with the magical world of childhood and confrontation with the harsh and often terrifying world of the adult. However, once this realization is made, this part of the novel loses much of its force and becomes somewhat monotonous. After a certain point, Russell runs out of things to say but the narrative contineus.

The other portion of the novel is devoted to Ava's brother, Kiwi, who runs away to the mainland in an effort to save the family but finds himself working at a competing amusement park, the Biblically inspired World of Darkness. I found these sections to be ultimately more interesting than Ava's story. However, Russel's narrative structure is somewhat disjointed. Almost the first hundred pages are told from Ava's first person perspective. However, after Kiwi runs away, the chapters alternate between the continued story of Ava and a third-person narrative of Kiwi's struggles on the mainland. The alternating narratives never really coincided in either temporal location or theme and I found this to really disjointed and somewhat clumsy.

Although I was unimpressed by her first novel I still think Karen Russell is a writer to keep an eye on. The novel suggests that Russell is a great short-story writer, and at times this novel really betrays its roots as an expanded short story. Maybe Russell is one of those writers who are never able to transform their ideas into a cohesive narrative for a full-length novel. Maybe I'm a sucker for a writer for my home town, but I still believe that this is Russell's A.M. (the Wilco debut) a derivative and somewhat disappointing debut that shows promises of future greatness. In the end, Swamplandia! exhibits the fact that Russell has a lot of creative ideas and interesting things to say. Unfortunately the combination of these elements creates a disjointed, muddled, and monotonous disappointment.

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Feb 10, 2011 Maggie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed Swamplandia! but it is not a book I would really recommend. It's merit is in it's characters. All are individually interesting and vibrant and even more so when thought of as a family. Russell goes into wonderful detail explaning the the rich and colorful Bigtree family and their Seths. It's the plot that's lacking!
The first, descriptive, half of the book is fabulous, but so much more could've been done with the second half. The plotline gets confusing. I foudn myself asking "WHERE IS...more

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Nov 23, 2011 Marco Kaye rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

No one writes sentences quite like Karen Russell. They are charming, mysterious, and miles from normal. Here, she vividly describes a meal made by Chief Bigtree, the wayward father of the book: “Tiny broccoli florets floated in the gluey cheese like a forest consumed by lava." The sky, “yawned blue at us, then disappeared.” Another one of my favorite sky sentences, “A huge hole in the middle of the ceiling opened into the clear night sky: it looked as if some great predator had peeled the thatch...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Kate by: My coworker Doug B.

Shelves: fiction

I really liked this book. I liked the coming of age stories of Ava, Ossie, and Kiwi. I liked how this book meandered and stagnated in some parts. I liked the imagination of it all, as well as, the magical realism which added a unique point of view to the story you don't always get in main stream literature. I liked how the magical parts were boardered in the beginning, middle, and end with realistic parts - their mother dying of cancer in the beginning, Kiwi's fight with his Grandfather in the m...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Jack rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: folks who like a sprinkle of wierdness

Recommended to Jack by: brother Phil

Shelves: jackrecommends

“The best book I’ve read in ten years,” exclaimed my older brother, Phil. Given that he is a bit weird, as are his tastes, I took his words with a shaker of salt. Phil was one of the very first hippies in Kansas, back when they were ostracized as if they had some deadly communicable disease. He has always marched to his own drum beat, a bizarre cadence that I often don’t hear or fully understand. So I assumed that Karen Russell’s Swamplandia would be as unconventional as my brother. But I had re...more “The best book I’ve read in ten years,” exclaimed my older brother, Phil. Given that he is a bit weird, as are his tastes, I took his words with a shaker of salt. Phil was one of the very first hippies in Kansas, back when they were ostracized as if they had some deadly communicable disease. He has always marched to his own drum beat, a bizarre cadence that I often don’t hear or fully understand. So I assumed that Karen Russell’s Swamplandia would be as unconventional as my brother. But I had read Russell’s delightful short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” in the Best American Short Stories of 2007 a few years back so I decided to give Swamplandia a try. Am I glad I did.

The faux Native-American Bigtree Tribe (actually a family of whites transplanted from Ohio decades ago) own an Everglades island they call Swamplandia. They put on an alligator tourist extravaganza. Hilola Bigtree, mother of the clan and perhaps the greatest alligator wrestler alive, has just died of cancer. Her husband, the Chief, master of ceremonies, announcer and lighting grip now struggles to make ends meet, as a new attraction has come to Loomis County – The World of Darkness, a cheesy swallowed-by-the-whale-all-of-the-way-to-hell fantasy tourist trap. Bigtree daughter Ava, at thirteen, has been training to take her mother’s alligator wrestling place, but isn’t quite ready yet. Her sixteen-year-old sister, Osceola, finds a book of the occult and now speaks to the dead (a phase?) and even has a boyfriend, a boy about her age who died mysteriously on a nearby abandoned dredge boat in the 1930s. Seventeen-year-old son Kiwi, who has read nearly every book on the old beached library ship, decides to run off to the mainland and get a job to help meet the mortgage payment.

Russell uses young Ava as her naïve first person narrator. All of the Bigtree children have been home schooled on the island and their only connection with the outside world has been through brief daily encounters with Swamplandia tourists. Ava is bright but painfully unworldly. In some ways she harkens to Harper Lee’s young heroine, Scout. “Outside I saw clouds rising like bread; one of these turned out to be the moon.” She has a bright child’s view of people, “Dennis Pelkis was snapping blue gum like he was trying to generate electricity or something.” Her observations contain a pleasant vibrancy – “Out here the mosquitoes were after me for red gallons…a force that could drain you in sips without ever knowing what you had been, or seeing your face.

The love for and loss of her mother permeates Ava’s thoughts and actions: “Our mom, as stern and all-seeing as she could often seem, would do us this great favor of pretending to be credulous when we faked sick. Mom cooed sincerely over our theatrical moanings and coughs. She would push our hair back from our cool liar’s scalps and bring us noodles and icy mainland colas as if happy for an excuse to love us like this.”

When Kiwi runs away to the mainland to find work, he discovers his book-read education to be inadequate to deal with the culture of mainland life. He finds work at the Bigtree tribe’s competitor World of Darkness where he struggles to assimilate. As Ava is not there on the mainland with him to give her first person’s account, Russell switches to a third person point-of-view. “Every day, Kiwi’s colleagues [a group of emigrants and college kid neer-do-wells] taught him what you could and could not say to another person here on the mainland. This was a little like having snipers tutor you on the limits of the prison yard.” Kiwi becomes the “World” employee’s favorite target for teasing and practical jokes. He discovers how to cuss, and when cussing is required to establish status and maintain it with one’s peers, a key to Loomis County survival. Kiwi considers, “If you really were gay, how could you possibly live here in Loomis County? If you were a bookworm, a Mormon, an albino, a virgin…if you had any kind of unusual hairstyle, evangelical religion, a gene for altruism or obesity; if you wrestled monsters on an island, like Ava, or conjugated Latin, like he did, or dated the motherfucking dead, how could you survive to age eighteen?” And Kiwi learns about libido, and eventually sex, “sixteen-year-old Nina, who wore her jeans so tight around the plush heart of her ass that sometimes Kiwi had to walk behind the cardboard flames to compose himself.” But it is Ava who provides the book’s compass, who struggles to find Russell’s life lessons.

When Ava’s sister, Osceola, runs away with what may be a real ghost in the wreck of an old dredge ship that has not been seaworthy for five decades, Ava sets off to rescue her. Russell shifts gears from an unusual study of a family in crisis to an even more unusual rescue thriller.

There are some minor quibbles with pacing, characterization and the flip-flop between mainland Kiwi and Ava's search for Osceola, forgivable all. Russell’s crisp colorful writing makes her story more than just an improbable ghost story. It is a poignant chronicle of a family exposed to drastic changes, how they react, how they struggle to cope and to hold on to what makes them a family. My brother knew what he was talking about.
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Sep 01, 2011 Paula Margulies rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A lushly written, quirky, and oddly compelling book, although I felt a little cheated after finishing it, mainly because of the loosely-ended plot. The setting is one of the best I've seen in fiction -- a steamy, mucky Florida swampland theme park called Swamplandia! hosted by the Bigtrees, a family of alligator wrestlers. The main character, Ava, is plucky and devoted to her family, which unravels when her mother, whose dives into an alligator-infested pond is the chief attraction at Swamplandi...more A lushly written, quirky, and oddly compelling book, although I felt a little cheated after finishing it, mainly because of the loosely-ended plot. The setting is one of the best I've seen in fiction -- a steamy, mucky Florida swampland theme park called Swamplandia! hosted by the Bigtrees, a family of alligator wrestlers. The main character, Ava, is plucky and devoted to her family, which unravels when her mother, whose dives into an alligator-infested pond is the chief attraction at Swamplandia!, dies. An oddly belligerent and evasive father, Captain Bigtree, a geeky-smart and naive brother, Kiwi, who runs away at 17 to work at a mainland theme park, and a sister, Ossie, who has delusions about romances with dead men she conjures on her Ouija Board, complete the cast of characters. I was with the book until Ossie runs away with an imaginary dredge operator (whose overly long history I skimmed through), and Ava leaves to search for her with a stranger who calls himself the Bird Man. I wondered at the sexual implications of a thirteen-year-old girl and a strange man leading her into the swamp -- why did the inevitable result happen deep in the swamp rather than the first night he was alone with her at her house? Where did all the food they took with them come from (the two sisters were starving up until that point)? And why would Ava so easily give up the red-colored alligator she loved enough to take along on the journey? These questions are never answered, and the discovery of Captain Bigtree's work as a mainland casino showman seems a muted distraction to the last minute rescue of both girls. The story ends abruptly with a couple of pages of summary about the girls and their new lives on the mainland, leaving me wondering what it had all really been about.

Switches from first-person (Ava) to third-person (Kiwi) narration aside, this book is beautifully written, with a mythic, hauntingly descriptive quality that echoes the dark, other-worldly environment the characters inhabit. But readers should be warned that the plot-line will take them on a bit of a wild (and, ultimately, unsettling) ride. (less)

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Feb 22, 2011 Jonathan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have read two of Russell's short stories in the Best American Short Story anthologies, but I have not read her published collection. Still, the stories that I read lead me to buy Swamplandia! within days of it's release. This book continues in a similar, although more realistic, vain as the title story of her collection -- St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

The premise of Swamplandia! -- a family of alligator wrestlers, running a struggling amusement park on a desolate island off the...more I have read two of Russell's short stories in the Best American Short Story anthologies, but I have not read her published collection. Still, the stories that I read lead me to buy Swamplandia! within days of it's release. This book continues in a similar, although more realistic, vain as the title story of her collection -- St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

The premise of Swamplandia! -- a family of alligator wrestlers, running a struggling amusement park on a desolate island off the gulf coast of Florida -- strains the imagination, but the reader can still accept the situation and the characters as plausible residents of the so-called, "real-world." This is likely because the members of the Bigtree family are each carefully drawn characters who we get to know intimately. This is even true for the matriarch of the family, who has died before the action of the book takes place. It is especially true for the "heroine" of the book, Ava, who narrates a portion of the story.

Indeed, Russell seems most comfortable with her characters and less so with the actions that they undertake. The main action of one of the duel plots is a journey through the swamp that Ava undertakes with a mysterious man called the "Bird Man." Their journey is exciting and contains beautiful descriptions of the swamp, but it is, after all, simply a water-logged journey. That their mission, their destination, was unique, wasn't enough for me. It felt done before.

Also, one published review that I read mentions that the end game felt overly rushed. I agree. The journey plodded along in at a pleasant, but somewhat slow place, until it seems Russell felt that it needed to end (it did) and did what she needed to do to end it.

The New Yorker chose Ms. Russell as one of their "20 under 40." I have not read enough recently to say, with authority, that their decision was "spot on," but I can say that despite some reservations with the book as a whole, the characters in Swamplandia! were interesting enough that I am looking forward to seeing who Ms. Russell introduces us to next.(less)

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Apr 06, 2011 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books, family-dynamics, kindle-stella-reads, latest-reads, women-s-lit, recommends-from-friends

Oh, what a riot of fun and fancy! "Swamplandia" is more than a novel, it's an "Alice in Wonderland" ish tale that is surely going to stay with readers long after we've put the book down.

This the story of a very odd, quasi-native american family who makes it their life work to create a side-of-the-road Swampland touring, gator wrestling, museum and fun park for people. Difficult to know how serious the patriarch, Chief Bigtree, is about the "establishment" that succors all of them. Included in th...more Oh, what a riot of fun and fancy! "Swamplandia" is more than a novel, it's an "Alice in Wonderland" ish tale that is surely going to stay with readers long after we've put the book down.

This the story of a very odd, quasi-native american family who makes it their life work to create a side-of-the-road Swampland touring, gator wrestling, museum and fun park for people. Difficult to know how serious the patriarch, Chief Bigtree, is about the "establishment" that succors all of them. Included in the Swamplandia homestead and gator park are two teenaged daughters and a teenaged son; a mother who dies of cancer; a n'er-do-well, slightly skewed father of these children, the aforementioned Chief, who is the "tribal" head. Each and every one of these odd and loveable characters has a story to tell and a life-view that is both genius and pitiful.

I can't remember when I've had more fun reading a book. I can't remember when a book has set me back and made me want to think about what just happened in the chapter I'd just read. And, I can't remember the last time recently I've met characters I've so thoroughly enjoyed from so many perspectives!

The core love and sense of family these people share is iconic and deeply moving. There's survival and humanity so touching and terrible, so earthy and real that you'll be offended if anyone interrupts your reading.

Ava, the youngest of the girls is the one who becomes a sort of "scout" in this coming of age story. Like the Alice of Wonderland, Ava of Swamplandia encounters strange things, strange creatures and much food for thought. The central theme of loss and how one copes is devastatingly rendered by Ms Russell who is an accomplished author. It's through Ava's eyes that I found the best guide, personally.

It's an extraordinary trip to "Swamplandia," where you'll find much to love and talk and think about. This is a dark story. It's a novel that brings to mind those "Dark Towns" we face today in the 21st century...ecological and environmental crises, breakdowns of family and medical care, loss of connection, floundering educational programs and lack of teachers for certain children, the extinction of animals and plants, etc... But, you'll love the way Karen Russell tells her story just the same!

I must highly recommended this book to bookgroups that are intellectual and are more than light readers. There's much to enjoy talking about here. Think of "To Kill A Mockingbird."

Deborah/TheBookishDame

Deborah/TheBookishDame(less)

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Jun 26, 2011 Olivia rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Geez, Karen Russell. WTF?

I loved the idea of 'Swamplandia!' so much. The story is strange, the title is awesome, and the setting and characters are completely foreign to me ... alligators! swamps! ghosts! a bird man! Florida! lots of exclamation points used with wild abandon! ... Swamplandia! woo hoo, right?

Unfortunately, no. There is no "woo hoo" in this book at all. Russell is clearly a talented writer with a cutting sense of humor (of which she shows a few hints in the beginning), but this st...more

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Jan 30, 2013 Jennifer Stringer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

**Spoiler Alert** --- Much of my disappointment came from expectations. When I'm asked to suspend disbelief and accept a 13 year old girl as an alligator wrestler, I was expecting something more in the vein of Pipi Longstocking. My daughter and I started out by listening together in the car, but midway through the first disc, my daughter tells me that "this book isn't worthy of us." (Is she soooo Mrs. Morris's student or what?)Fortunately we shell out the big bucks to send her to a school where...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Mary rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have mixed feelings about this. It starts as a first person narrative by a young teenage girl, Ava, whose family has an alligator wrestling farm that is 'another roadside attraction', which is going into decline both because of the times and because of the death of the mother in the family, who was the big star in the show. There are some wonderful language elements - "a tiny fence" of birthday candles; the older sister's very blond hair described as "not weak chamomile but pure frost", and p...more

I have mixed feelings about this. It starts as a first person narrative by a young teenage girl, Ava, whose family has an alligator wrestling farm that is 'another roadside attraction', which is going into decline both because of the times and because of the death of the mother in the family, who was the big star in the show. There are some wonderful language elements - "a tiny fence" of birthday candles; the older sister's very blond hair described as "not weak chamomile but pure frost", and particularly some evocative descriptions of the wetlands area. There are also some strong parallel themes, about innocence going into the world, and emergence of a spirit after death. The main voice, though, is giving us a very snarky outlook.

After the father leaves to find investors or work, the three teenage children start going different directions - Kiwi, the seventeen year old son, bright and full of homeschool book learning, goes to the mainland and ends up working at a rival amusement park attraction; Ossie, the middle sister, takes up spiritism, and finally announces that she is in love with and planning to leave with a ghost, Louis Thanksgiving, who died in the swamp in the 1930s while working on a dredging tour. Kiwi's story is told separately in the third person; Ossie's story is only seen through Ava's retelling.

There is so much material here for a novel or novels, but this one seems to be a mashup of stories that would have been stronger separately. The basic story about the eccentric people hustling to make a buck and exist in an off the beaten path place is there, but ultimately the story goes nowhere and just goes on and on. The most interesting story for me was Louis Thanksgiving's, from the 1930s, and expanded would have make a thoughtful novel about an unusual place at an unusual time - could have even brought in the grandfather as a young man, since he got to the swamp at about that time. Kiwi's story of coming of age is also strong, but it seems unfortunate that the author only towards the end looked on him as sympathetically as she did on Louis Thanksgiving, who is also an innocent in his world. Some of the writing is strongest here - there is a good section where Kiwi hears a reference in a rap song to "cricket bits" and thinks it must refer to women's genitalia, but then waxes recollection of the sounds of crickets in the swamp.

I am really wondering about editors and spellcheckers - there is more than one reference to "baling" water out of a boat. I did make a point of looking this up in a dictionary, and my understanding is confirmed - water can be bailed out of a boat, but water is not baled, i.e., bundled together in a bale. (less)

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Jun 09, 2012 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I can't believe I never wrote about this... I thought for a long time about this book after I read it, trying to figure out what it did and didn't do.

I thought the premise was fascinating, and some of the descriptions of the setting were spookily beautiful. What bothered me was the feeling I had that the author was completely detached from all of the characters -- that she was writing about people she didn't care about one way or the other. That feeling of complete detachment infused the writing...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Kerri rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This was 4-5 star territory, until 7/8 through the book, you know: THAT part. I feel like I was sold a bill of goods. I liked what I was sold — a book with some seriously beautifully depicted magical realism, a hero with a call, and an unlikely helper, almost a spirit guide. I mean, I was quite aware of where that "relationship" could have headed, and I kept consciously thinking, I'm glad that I really believe that the author is going to take it on a more original path than that. But nope; even...more

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May 14, 2012 Stephanie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-for-me

I didn't like this book because it was boring, not interesting and annoying.

Interested to know what happens, but don't want to waste more than a minute or two? Read my synopsis:

(view spoiler)...more I didn't like this book because it was boring, not interesting and annoying.

Interested to know what happens, but don't want to waste more than a minute or two? Read my synopsis:

(view spoiler)[A girl named Ava lives on an island in the swampy everglades with her dad, who calls himself the chief but isn't actually Native American at all, and her sister and brother. They own and live in a tourist trap called Swamplandia! which is basically an alligator wrestling show and a bunch of crap. The mom was the main attraction, because she was a top-notch wrestler, but then she died. Now the park has less visitors and isn't making enough money. There are three main stories:

1. The brother, Kiwi, runs away from home, moves to the mainland, where he gets a job at the competition - a stupid theme water park with a Hell theme. I'm not kidding. While there he learns that living on an island with only your family makes you socially awkward. He hates it and can't save money because he makes minimum wage and has to spend money to live in the dorms underneath hell and such. He gets bumped up from janitor to lifeguard where he sort of saves a girl's life (he doesn't think she was really unconscious before he gave her mouth to mouth, but that's not really important at all). He gets labeled a hero and because of that is allowed to train for a job flying helicopters.

2. The sister, Ossie, has a book about communicating with the dead. She dates dead boys and falls in love with a ghost guy who worked on a barge she and Ava found washed up somewhere on the shore of their island. Ava doesn't believe her until Ossie tells her this unbelievably boring and detailed story of this dude's ENTIRE LIFE. The dad leaves the girls on the island alone to go to the mainland to find investors or some shit (he apparently has done this from time to time for as long as they can remember). Once dad is gone, Ossie runs away to get married to her ghost boyfriend.

3. Ava, reading the note that her sister has run away, goes to find Ossie. Instead she finds a "Bird Man," who comes back to Swamplandia! with her and she changes into a bathing suit and does her mom's alligator routine for him (did I mention she is a wrestler and wants to be as good as her mom some day?). If you think he rapes her, what with the being vulnerable and wet and nearly naked and alone, you are mistaken. Instead, he spends the night at the house and in the morning offers to help her navigate the waters to find this passage to the underworld. Ava, desperate to find her sister and also a little crazy, packs a bag and the two set out on an adventure! They travel for days and days and days of boring stuff where she comes to feel really close to the Bird Man. Finally they find the underworld! They cross the threshold and... it doesn't seem different from the regular world. There's even some people, but he assures her they are dead people. He gets pretty pissed when she yells out to them. But at this point she's feeling less confident that this coo-coo knows what the heck he's talking about. After days and days of traveling and getting crazy far from the world, he feels confident enough to get down to rape business. Ava runs, blah, blah, blah, what are the odds, runs into her sister who was "left at the alter" by her ghost fiance. What's that you hear? Is it a helicopter? Is it their brother who just happens to be flying a helicopter for the first time? OMG what a happy reunion.

There's also a bunch of useless BS about their grandfather. And the dad's "business stuff on the mainland" is really that he works at a casino and the son found him out at some point in all of that.

THE END (hide spoiler)](less)

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Aug 12, 2011 meeners rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, the-mfa-curse-strikes-again

i confess: giving this book even two stars is a struggle. i was ready to like it, to praise its finely crafted prose - until maybe 50 pages in, when i started to feel some serious reading fatigue from all the Finely Crafted Prose (emphatic capitalization necessary). 100 pages in, and i was ready to throw my kindle against the wall in a fit of Finely Crafted Prose pique. i've got nothing against careful, ponderous writing, but writing that basically sits there preening at its reflection in the mi...more

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Apr 29, 2011 Darren White rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: florida-books

SWAMPLANDIA!
Karen Russell
315 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.95

I have searched for writers, musicians and artists from Florida for the past year in an effort to uncover a native Florida culture. I am searching for the Florida that callous tourists, philandering golfers and deceitful politicians have concreted over.

My family heritage goes six generations back into that unforgiving country. We left Florida for Texas as I entered my teenage years. My memories fade.

What remain are impressions. The smell...more

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Mar 24, 2011 Debra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sai-king-recommends, mystery-thriller

Stephen King says: "Sisters Ava and Ossie Bigtree are left in charge of their family’s fading Everglades theme park, Swamplandia!, when a flashier attraction (World of Darkness — think hell with roller coasters) opens nearby. Russell is a tremendously gifted writer, and Swamplandia! goes rollicking right along...until you get to the bone-chilling second half, which is as terrifying as Deliverance. It’ll be published in early 2011. Don’t miss it."

I thought this book was wonderful; the writing sub...more

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Jun 24, 2011 EZRead eBookstore rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My expectations were rings-of-Saturn high for “Swamplandia!” after finishing Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” However, nothing but suffering and gnashing of teeth can come from high expectations, and I was bummed beyond bummed with “Swamplandia!” Where I found “St. Lucy’s” to be fresh and weird, I thought “Swamplandia!” was just a lengthier re-hash of the short story with all kinds of sad “bonuses.”

“Swampandia!” follows alligator-wrestling sisters Ava and Ossie afte...more My expectations were rings-of-Saturn high for “Swamplandia!” after finishing Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” However, nothing but suffering and gnashing of teeth can come from high expectations, and I was bummed beyond bummed with “Swamplandia!” Where I found “St. Lucy’s” to be fresh and weird, I thought “Swamplandia!” was just a lengthier re-hash of the short story with all kinds of sad “bonuses.”

“Swampandia!” follows alligator-wrestling sisters Ava and Ossie after their mother dies, and the rest of their family abandons them. It also includes the perspective of their brother Kiwi, as he runs off to work at a Swamplandia! theme park rival. Set in a mythic Florida filled with ghosts and bird men, it sounds like the perfect recipe of nonsense and fairy tale. Unfortunately, this recipe gave me the kind of food poisoning that makes me want to sue the restaurant. Karen Russell replaced the whimsy with actual terrible real-life things that happen to the siblings, like rape, loss of family, dead end jobs, and motel rooms. It is such an unpleasant contrast to the magical realism, it made me sad. Though the content of her short stories were dark, I felt like they were more darkly funny and tapered with a tinge of hopefulness. “Swamplandia!” is just dark-dark goose.

If her other stories were any indication, I felt like Russell has a big enough imagination to create a completely unique novel without having to borrow from her most promising short story. I feel like she really said everything that needed to be said with the original “Swamplandia!” short, and I wish I didn’t know that things took a turn for the awful for Ava and Kiwi.

I’ll definitely pick up another work by Karen Russell, but here’s to hoping it’s another short story collection. I think she is a short story superstar; her full-length novel felt like a B-celebrity’s tuneless singing career. Cruel, I know.

-EZ Read Staffer Jenifer

Watch the recorded review and meet Jenifer and Amelia here: http://vimeo.com/21037120 (less)

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Sep 23, 2012 Jillian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ummm.

This book is full of beautiful writing. The setting is swampy islandy Florida. The descriptions are sticky and visceral. I complain that the narrator is 13 years old and her thoughts don't really sound very thirteeny, but I can easily suspend that disbelief.

The story is creepy and ghosty and pretty for most of the book. We never really learn if the ghostiness is real, but I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe it so much that I pretty much loathe where the story goes in the end. While...more

1 like · like · see review

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About Karen Russell

Karen Russell graduated from Columbia University's MFA program in 2006. Her stories have been featured in The Best American Short Stories, Conjunctions, Granta, The New Yorker, Oxford American, and Zoetrope. Her first book of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was published in September 2006. In November 2009, she was named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree. I...more

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Quotes from Swamplandia!

“Heaven, Kiwi thought, would be the reading room of a great library. But it would be private. Cozy. You wouldn’t have to worry about some squeaky-shoed librarian turning the lights off on you or gauging your literacy by reading the names on your book spines, and there wouldn’t be a single other patron. The whole place would hum with a library’s peace, filtering softly over you like white bars of light…” — 27 people liked it

“Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart.” — 25 people liked it

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