Summary from GoodReads:

A triumphant debut novel and follow-up to Karen Russell’s universally acclaimed short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline—think Buddenbrooksset 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, 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 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:

I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting when I picked up Swamplandia! but I knew it would have something to do with alligators and the swamp lands of Florida.

I was right on both counts – but in addition to these elements I also got a story that just did not have quite as much punch as I was hoping it would have, which is disappointing.

While there really wasn’t anything technically wrong with the story, the writing, the character development and all that jazz, I just didn’t feel any sense of urgency or desire to sit down and actually finish the book.  In fact, I had to force myself to get through the last half of it and it was the most disconnected, strange feeling I’ve felt in a while.

There is plenty of quirkiness in Swamplandia! but beneath the unique amusement “parks” and the strange characters of the Bigtree family, there was a story that was so heavily filled with sorrow; debt, death, rape, mental illness – it was all present.

So while I had high hopes and was so excited to finally crack the cover on this book, I came away disappointed and wishing that there could have been more – more about the shows, more about Swamplandia!‘s good times then just the bad.

Check out these review(s)!

Literary Corner Cafe