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.
Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in the New Yorker's debut fiction issue, was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007, and was most recently named one of New Yorker magazine's 20 Under 40. Her first collection of short stories, St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was longlisted for the Guardian first book award.
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*
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
*Sunday Times*
It's a wonderfully extravagant, eccentric story by a brilliant
young writer with an amazing imagination
*The Times*
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
*TheBookBag.com*
The Miami-born writer renders the travails and delights of
a...dreamlike world that leaves you intoxicated and slightly
dishevelled
*Monocle*
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*
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 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*
Russell's primeval imaginings and gutsy language lurk long in the
memory
*Independent*
The novel packs a genuine punch
*Daily Telegraph*
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 *
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 -- Stephen Amidon * Sunday Times *
It's a wonderfully extravagant, eccentric story by a brilliant
young writer with an amazing imagination -- Kate Saunders * The
Times *
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 * TheBookBag.com *
The Miami-born writer renders the travails and delights of
a...dreamlike world that leaves you intoxicated and slightly
dishevelled * Monocle *
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