More about the book
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.
Book purchase
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
- Language
- Released
- 2011
- product-detail.submit-box.info.binding
- (Paperback)
Payment methods
We’re missing your review here.
- Title
- Swamplandia!
- Language
- English
- Authors
- Karen Russell
- Publisher
- Random House
- Released
- 2011
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 315
- ISBN10
- 070118602X
- ISBN13
- 9780701186029
- Series
- Tags
- Fiction, Nature, Fantasy, Family, Contemporary Fiction, USA, Literary Fiction, Death, Mysterious, Mysteries, Magical Realism, New Beginning, Rape, Togetherness, Man and Nature, Florida, Southern Gothic, Exoticism, Marshlands
- First published
- 2011
- Original title
- Swamplandia!
- Rating
- 3.3 out of 5
- Description
- 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.