Swamplandia! - Softcover

Russell, Karen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099555832 ISBN 13: 9780099555834

Publisher: Vintage, 2012

Synopsis

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?

About this title

Review:

`Karen Russell's first novel Swamplandia! Is a deeply affecting, entertaining and fantastical story.' --Vogue,

`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' --The Book Bag

`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

`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

`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 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' --The Sunday Times

`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

`The Miami-born writer renders the travails and delights of a...dreamlike world that leaves you intoxicated and slightly dishevelled' --Monocle

`It's a wonderfully extravagant, eccentric story by a brilliant young writer with an amazing imagination' --The Times

`Russell's primeval imaginings and gutsy language lurk long in the memory' --The Independent

`The novel packs a genuine punch.'
--Daily Telegraph, Jonathan Gibbs

'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

On one level, this is a sweet, slightly sentimental coming-of-age story; on another, it is a postmodern satire --Scarlett Thomas, Guardian

Book Description:

The eagerly anticipated, triumphant debut novel from the prize-winning author of St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2013 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0099555832
• ISBN 13: 9780099555834
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336