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“Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride: Russell has style in spades.” —Emma Donoghue on the cover of The New York Times Book Review
From the celebrated twenty-nine-year-old author of the everywhere-heralded short-story collection St. 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. 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.
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. 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. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.
Against 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. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.
Read the short story on which Swamplandia! is based
Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in The New Yorker’s debut fiction issue and on The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list, and was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. In 2009, she received the 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation. Three of her short stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories volumes. She is currently writer-in-residence at Bard College.
a very similar version of this story was put up as a play at the Hollywood fringe festival at the theater of note in August of 2010.
The play was of a spanish girl ( or argu\ably indian girl) who’s mother has died and who’s father she feels she cannot dicuss her female changes with at the age of 13
She feels abandonned by her mother so she goes down into the ”
underworld” to find her mother and meet s up with all sorts of dias de los muertos flavored characters . including a ghost who is trying to do penance but he really wants to eat her, and he is wearing an “alligator” shaped full face mask the whole play.
it was a wonderful play. Thought you should be aware. which came foirst? the chicken or the egg?
Just an fyi – and it may be either intentional or already fixed, but I just received Swamplandia! and a paragraph is repeated on pages 108 and 110. It begins, “The Dredge was there to dynamite the marl…”
Also, I love the book so far. Great, creative writing! Thanks.
Thanks, Carol! I’ve gotten in touch with Russell’s editor, and they’re aware of the misprint. It will be fixed in future printings.
Great book!
In the acknowledgments there is an error. I assume that the “Katherine Dunne” that is mentioned should really be “Katherine Dunn” with no ‘e’ at the end… if it’s the author of “Geek Love” who is being acknowledged.
I have just finished reading this book. I heard an interview with Karen Russel on The Book Report radio show (http://bookreportradio.com/) I could’t resist it as the alligators are called Seth, just like me. A great read. Thanks to The Book Report for the recommendation
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2012/mar/06/field-notes-the-wide-world-of-southern-fiction/