Swamplandia!

Journey to Swamplandia and meet the Bigtree family - a clan of alligator wrestlers and theme park owners whose existence depends on gullible tourists desiring to see the unbelievable. The Bigtrees' lives turn upside down, however, when Hilola Bigtree dies from ovarian cancer. Hilola was the main attraction - a petite woman who could tape shut an alligator's mouth in 30 seconds and swan dive into a pit of alligators unscathed. While Hilola's death takes a toll on the park, it most profoundly affects her surviving family - her husband Chief and children Kiwi, Osceola and Ava.

With the park losing tourists and their home missing Hilola, the remaining Bigtree family begins a fast deterioration. Kiwi runs off the mainland to find work at a show more competing theme park to help pay off Swamplandia's debts, while Chief takes one of his long business trips. Osceola, enjoying newfound freedom, becomes fascinated with spiritualism and believes she can date ghosts - to the point where she runs off one night to elope with a ghost named Louis Thanksgiving.

That leaves 13-year-old Ava alone - until The Bird Man arrives. Allegedly hired to help locals clear off birds from their islands, Ava befriends The Bird Man, and together they begin a several-day journey to a place called The Underworld to find Osceola and bring her home.

The majority of the book is told from Ava's perpsective, and true to her age, she sees things in a naive way. As the story progresses, her naivete turns to scorching reality. The reader sees what's coming, but young Ava does not. The last 100 pages of Swamplandia! will have you turning the pages in dread, hoping your worst fears for this young heroine do not come true.

It would be easy to dismiss this book as too fantastic with ghost lovers and swamp living, but Karen Russell does a tremendous job making it all seem very real. Her ability to describe the people and places of Swamplandia suck you into a vortex that you don't want to leave until the last page is read. At the heart of it all, Swamplandia! is a coming of age tale that focuses on the love of family. With its gothic feel and Florida setting, I enjoyed this story and can't wait to read more by this talented young writer. show less

This novel is about a family of alligator wrestlers living in the Florida swampland, but I feel like neither that nor anything else I could possibly think to say about it adequately describes it. It's absurd, touching, sometimes dreamlike, very disturbing in places, and deeply weird. I can say that I'm rather impressed with Russell's writing. She has a way of coming up with metaphors and descriptions that are sometimes bizarre and off-kilter but somehow work for this particular story and other times are just incredibly apt and beautiful.

Ultimately, it's as hard to know quite what to make of Swamplandia! as it is to describe it, but I can definitely say this much about it: at a time when I find myself increasingly distracted and often show more unable to settle into a book for as long as I'd like, this one grabbed me by the brain and left me wanting to do nothing else but read. And, boy, was it good to sink into that experience again.

Rating: 4.5/5. I could argue with myself about whether it deserves the extra half-star, and maybe if I'd read it at a different time I'd be less generous, but I think that last point pretty well clinches it for me right now. show less

The Publisher Says: The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline—think Buddenbrooks set in the Florida Everglades—and Swamplandia!, their island home 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 headliner, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; her brother has secretly defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their sinking family afloat; and her father, Chief Bigtree, is AWOL. To save her family, Ava must show more journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.

My Review: The Bigtree family, two-generation swamp folks, have reached the end of their useful lives as purveyors of alligator wrestling and mild amusements to the tourists of fictional Loomis County, in the Ten Thousand Islands. Chief Sam Bigtree loses his wife Hilola, and after that the will to make his living there in the swamps with his three children, 17-year-old Kiwi, 16-year-old Osceola, and 10-year-old Ava. The book follows the misadventures of Ava, who is left alone on the island with the older, but seemigly tetched, Osceola, a girl who believes with all her heart that she is in touch with the spirit world, and specifically with a dead teenaged dredgeman from the 1930s called Louis Thanksgiving. Ava, older in spirit than Ossie, pokes fun at her sister's new beau the ghost. Things turn scary when Ossie, in the grips of what she insists is a spirit possession, abandons Ava and sets out for some Calusa Indian mounds which are locally believed to be a gateway to the underworld. Kiwi, meantime, has gone to "the mainland" (a place of fear and derision to the Bigtrees one and all) to work at the competing theme park. His journey from odd man out to local hero with self-confidence is about 1/3 of the book, told from third person limited PoV. Ava's hunt for Ossie through the swamp country, as aided by a tall, skinny stranger called the Bird Man, is the bulk of the book, told in first person as a flashback. What happens to Ava in the swamp is terrifying, what with the belief she has of traveling a spirit landscape into the Underworld in search of Ossie. What happens to Ossie on a similar journey is harrowing when we finally hear it from her mouth. All is finally put right in this weird and fractured family, the deus ex machina unfolding its long and shining arm to bring forth happiness and contentment. Of a very mitigated sort.

Well, now. Where to begin. Lushness and loveliness of language? Yes, there is that. Resonant Hero's Journey to the Gates of Hell, complete with safe return? Check. Obligatory abuse of women and children by older men? Sadly, that's here too, though God knows I wish it wasn't.

This is a first novel by a talented writer. I am sorry to say that it relies a little too much on currently fsahionable tropes to merit a good rating. I am sick unto death of novels by women that use adult males as bogeymen, from neglectful father to deceitful and abusive "helper." Stop it. It's boring. And, in case any of you women writers want to think outside your comfort zone for a second, what message is this sending to the girls in the world? Be afraid of men? And to the boys, you are intrinsically bad and evil and not to be trusted by women? Are these little details not immediately obvious to you, and if not, why not?

But the book in question is, as noted above, lush and lovely of language. Its phrases are smooth and silken in my mental ear. Its images are beautifully crafted. Its mythic structure is nicely handled, though I could have done completely without the whole Kiwi thing. One hopes that Karen Russell will see past this lazy co-opting of trendy shibboleths and create something as beautifully thought out as it is written.

Should you read this book? Yeah, well, they're your eyes, blink 'em at whatever makes you happy. Me, I'd go to the liberry to get the book, not shell out most of $30 to procure it. show less

One of the blurbs on the dust jacket of my lovely copy of Swamplandia! comes from Joseph O'Neill and calls Russell "an unfairly talented writer." This blurb struck me immediately, because in some ways, Russell is overly gifted. She has a preternatural sense of the descriptive, which for me is one of the things I most treasure in the books that I love. For example, here is the narrator Ava discussing what would happen if she were ever to leave her family's island home:

I would vanish on the mainland, dry up in that crush of cars and strangers, of flesh hidden inside metallic colors, the salt white of the sky over the interstate highway, the strange pink-and-white apartment complexes where mainlanders lived like cutlery in drawers.

Or here, show more Kiwi, Ava's brother fills out a medical history:

Kiwi had to answer pages and pages of questions about himself. Nope to measles, never to mumps, scabies, diabetes. He'd had two weeklong bouts of weird dreaming and terrible chills when he was six that his mom referred to as "grasshopper fever," but who knew how that illness translated into mainland etiology? Old crackers in the swamp used bear piss to cure chicken pox. One section of the form was called "Family History." Well, for starters, my sixteen-year-old sister is crazy, she has aural and visual hallucinations ... my youngest sister is an equestrian of Mesozoic lizards ... my father wears a headdress ... my grandfather bites men now.

This quote gives some idea of what the book is about. Russell tells the story of the Bigtree family, Florida islanders who own an alligator wrestling themepark. Hilola Bigtree, mother of Ava and Kiwi, is the star wrestler until she passes away from cancer, after which the park gradually - and then rapidly- declines in popularity and begins to die as well. To compound the slump, along the freeway in mainland Loomis, the nearest city, another theme park is being built. This park is called The World of Darkness and is hell themed. Eventually, all of the tourists are gone, the ferry comes no more, and the Chief - head of the Bigtree clan - leaves for the mainland to pursue "Carnival Darwinism," his plan to reinvent Swamplandia! He leaves his children alone on the island and soon the oldest son Kiwi leaves for the mainland to pursue his destiny as a self-labeled genius. Ossie, the oldest daughter, has fallen in love with a ghost (seriously, an actual ghost) and the youngest of the children, Ava, is left trying to fill her mother's shoes by becoming the next great Bigtree alligator wrestler.

Ava is the main first person narrator of the story, but there are also third person limited chapters in the voice of Kiwi that commence once he leaves for the mainland. Most of the humor in the novel is found in these chapters, as Kiwi finds himself immersed in a world that is radically different than what he expected, and in which the reader can finally recognize her world. Kiwi is an outcast on Swamplandia! and is surprised to find that he is an outcast on the mainland as well.

In fact, all of the characters in the novel are so strange that their story can often verge on the grotesque, and yet, Ava is a empathetic protagonist, who despite her bravado, reveals herself through the novel as the lost child that she is. Her story grows darker and darker, and also more compelling, as the novel progresses. Up until the last page, Ava refuses the vulnerability that the reader sees, and envisions herself as the rock at the center of her family, the anchor. There is certainly dramatic irony here, and the end of the book can seem rather bleak.

I just finished the book, and I should perhaps let it settle in my mind a bit longer, but I found the ending appropriate, timely in fact. The fate that befalls the Bigtrees is one that is familiar in our current America. The Bigtrees, as odd as they may be, are entrepreneurs in a pure sense. They have a small family business that is encroached upon by the "mainland" corporate world. Their island is literally encroached upon as well, by a government introduced invasive species of swamp plant. Although their world is magical, foreign, and often frightening, it is a microcosm for the understandable world in which we live.

I didn't love every bit of this book. It is rich and lush and descriptive, but it is not tremendously plot-driven, which made it a slow read. I have been reading a lot of "quick reads" lately, so it tested my patience. I loved the Kiwi chapters, and wished there were more of them, although by the end of the novel, I was wrapped up in Ava's story as well. In the end, I recommend this book for anyone who- like I do - appreciates the fine art of descriptive detail and purposeful quirkiness and who wants to get lost in the always strange, sometimes wonderfully magical and sometimes darkly Gothic world of the Swamp.

FTC: I received a copy of this book from the publisher. show less

If you think this book is going to be magical and fun based on the description... IT'S NOT. It's NOT a cool swamp adventure and I have a lot of thoughts.

The Bigtree family runs an alligator wrestling theme park in Florida. Unfortunately the mother dies who was the big star and so all the tourists stop showing up and things aren't looking good for the future of the park. This is where the story starts

There are three kids in this family: Kiwi (17), Ossie (16), and Ava (12/13?). There's also their dad who they call "Chief". Soon after their mother's death Ossie finds a book about ghosts and magic and she thinks she can communicate with the dead. Meanwhile, Kiwi is worried about their future and suspects they're running out of money. It show more seems like their father isn't worried or doing enough to save the family, so Kiwi leaves to get a job and try to go to school and send back money. He gets a job at a "real" theme park and half the book is about his job there. Soon afterwards, their dad also leaves to go earn some more money, leaving Ossie and Ava alone (which is SO STUPID, but I digress).

Soon after their dad and brother leave, Ossie "meets" a ghost named Louis Thanksgiving and decides she's going to run away into the swamp and marry him. Ava is concerned about this obviously and decides to go after her (along with some random man who she meets lurking outside her house and who's name she doesn't know). All of this is basically on the back of the book, except some of the specific details.

Almost halfway through the book I started to get an unsettling feeling. It was interesting so far, but I was getting worried and decided to look up reviews with spoilers and learned that the Birdman rapes Ava in the swamp and immediately didn't want to read anymore. Eventually I decided I would keep reading because I was already extremely upset knowing that that's what happened I figured it wouldn't make it any worse if I just finished the goddamn book. It does happen and it happens right towards the end and it sucks. Technically I guess you could say that things "work out okay" in the end, but I feel like this book just wanted me to feel terrible. The whole time I felt like it was just screaming at me "you think life is fun and magical??? haha NO! life is actually awful and disgusting and horrible and nothing means anything and there's no magic and also fuck you".

In the end they go to a "normal" life at a normal school, Ossie is on medications, and they just get an apartment and that's it.. no more alligators or theme park or anything. The entire book you hear about how cool and magical the theme park was before, but you never get to see that. Even when the characters mention it to other people in the story, very rarely has anybody ever heard of Swamplandia. Ava's (and Ossie's) horrible experience in the swamp are never really dealt with in any real way. Ava describes her nightmares and Ossie's medications and how she learns to conform. All of Kiwi's chapters are about his desires to go to school and his struggles to conform to expectations after growing up the way he did... It's so depressing.

I feel like emotionally I understand what this book was going for. It's bleak and harsh and awful, but I think that's what it was trying to be. It reminded me of Goosebumps or Gravity Falls or something but if you sucked all the fun out with a siphon. It feels gross. There's one scene where Kiwi finds out that his dad has been secretly working at a casino. Instead of seeing his father as this great theatrical presence, he's sort of just old and pitiful. That's kind of what reading this book is like. These characters are each realizing slowly that the magic they saw in the world was never actually there. It actually all sucks, and I'm just like.... why would anybody want to read this? After reading this I just feel drained and sad. If you want a book that makes you feel like nothing matters and everything sucks, I guess this could work for you, but in general I definitely wouldn't recommend it. I'm not saying all books have to be fun, but man... this was bleak. show less

This book hit all my hot buttons. Great characters, unusual plot, masterful writing, ironic humor. It's a little like Water for Elephants in that it leans slightly into a fantasy world without tipping over into the fantasy genre. I listened to it, and though it took me a while to appreciate the actor who read Ava's parts (a male actor read Kiwi's) I grew to love her. Some books I suspect are better on paper, other in audio form. In this case I think both would be wonderful. The only off note for me was an event towards the end of the book. I don't want to spoil things so I won't go into detail except to say that it wasn't dealt with in a way that felt consistent with the rest of the book. Other than that I was entranced.

I absolutely loved the first half of the book--the alligator-wrestling, independent Bigtree family, the swampy island/decaying amusement park setting, and the wonderfully evocative writing. But my interest and enjoyment fell flat about the time Ava set off with the sinister seeming Bird Man in search of Osceola, her ghost-eloping sister. For me, the plot started to drag and the details and digressions became both too long and too uninteresting. Also, Ava's incongruous trust of Bird Man felt so unlikely I lost the ability to sink into the story and finished the book as an aloof observer.