In the first few chapters tragedy strikes, the old theme park looses it's star performer Hilola. Mother Hilola (think Esther Williams swimming with gators) is the star performer, Father the Chief runs the show, son Kiwi and daughters Osceola and Ava (the main character, an alligator wrestler in training) are home schooled kids who's stories drive the plot. However, I just can't join in the praise for the Bigtree tribe. Russell produces beautiful prose that makes this book special. She makes the run down theme park Swamplandia! come alive and that entertains. Russell does a beautiful job of inviting us into the swamp, we feel the heat, see the waterways, smell the wild orchids. And yes, I do love the premise of this story. I had also read a rave review from Carl Hiaasen, my expectations were quite high. This book is listed in Stephen King's top ten books you MUST read so I took his advice. I am wrestling with myself (not alligators) about how I feel after listening to this book. Sometimes Brilliant, Sometimes Disappointing An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.

Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified 13, to manage 98 gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.Īgainst a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking.

Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly number one in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. This girl is on fire” - Los Angeles Times Book Review) comes a blazingly original debut novel that takes us back to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (“How I wish these were my own words, instead of the breakneck demon writer Karen Russell’s.Run for your life. From the celebrated 29-year-old author of the everywhere-heralded short-story collection St.

Swamplandia author