Swamplandia!

By: Karen Russell

Narrated by: Arielle Sitrick, David Ackroyd

Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

From the celebrated 29-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 number one 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 13, to manage 98 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.

©2011 Karen Russell (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

“[Russell] has thrown the whole circus of her heart onto the page, safety nets be damned. . . . Russell has deep and true talent.” ( San Francisco Chronicle)

“Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride. . . . This family, wrestling with their desires and demons . . . will lodge in the memories of anyone lucky enough to read Swamplandia!” ( The New York Times Book Review)

“The bewitching Swamplandia! is a tremendous achievement.”( Entertainment Weekly)

Loathed the main performer

What a jarring experience. I would have returned this audiobook after less than 5 minutes of listening if it hadn't been the selection for our book club.

Amazing, powerful, haunting, and funny

What did you love best about Swamplandia!?

The wonderful, screwy fabulous Bigtree family.Before circumstances send them spinning out of control, I wanted to be one of them, wrestling alligators, and running wild in the Florida everglades.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Ava Bigtree of course. Precocious, funny, brave, the loss of her mother leaves her untethered and vulnerable to evil.

What does Arielle Sitrick and David Ackroyd bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The narrators vividly capture the voices of Karen Russell's wonderful characters

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Unforgetable

Any additional comments?

This is a wonderful, wonderful book, one of my favorites of all time. Everyone should read it. That said, I thought that Russell didn't know how to end it. I found the last bit of the book weaker than the start, but it is still an a fabulously imagined world with characters that jump off the page, voices that will stay with you for the rest of your life. How can a book be side splittingly funny, and heartbreakingly tragic.

Reader was distracting

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would be hesitant to recommend this mostly because of the performance.

If you’ve listened to books by Karen Russell before, how does this one compare?

This was my first book performed by Karen Russell.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

I was repeatedly off put by the reader's mispronunciation of words. This kept me from being able to fully involve myself in the story. Shouldn't someone have noticed this during production?!

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

I don't think so.

Murky and Slow Moving

Originating from a 2006 short story found in St.Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Swaplandia! is Karen Russell’s debut novel and will probably be remembered for its sheer oddity and Russell’s poetic and unconventional use of language. You have quotes like, "Something lunged in me then. receded. A giggle or a sob. A noise. I thought you look very stupid dad" and "Like any hatchling gator, her snout tapered into a look of flutey suspicion". Such lush descriptions and grammatical acrobatics due demand attention (as does the exclamation point in the title), but they do little to help our plucky narrator Ava who has been abandoned by her entire family at their alligator wrestling park in the Florida swamplands. At its best pace Swamplandia! ebbs along. A secondary sub plot involving Ava’s brother Kiwi who runs away to work at a rival amusement park, goes nowhere. When the action begins, somewhere in the middle of the story—Ava sets out to save her older sister who has run away to marry her ghost lover--it’s a welcome relief which then gives way to terror as we realize the dangerous situation Ava has naively put herself in.

In case you’re unaware, Swamplandia! received a starred review from Booklist, Library Journal, and Publisher’s weekly, an A- from EW, a rave in ELLE, a plug from Stephen King amongst other glowing accounts. These accolades frankly left me stumped. I had to start the story over almost a dozen times because I kept losing interest. Yes, it is imaginative and uniquely voiced, but instead of coloring Ava’s story, these devices bog it down.

The audio book is read by a young narrator, Arielle Sitrick, and since Ava is a pre-teen, this makes sense. But the alternating chapters are voiced by David Ackroyd who is clearly a middle age man, not the tonnage Kiwi one expects. So it makes the gimmick of using Arielle pointless. Disappointed.

Fusion fantasy fun

I knew what I WAS GETTING INTO with Karen Russell, and she delivers with good frolic and a gift for language. Downside for me was the female reader Ms Sitrick, who’s high chirpy voice (with little feel for the sentences flows and rhythms) was a serious negative to the point where I almost stopped listening. REALLY irritating, and a huge disservice to the story’s cadence and linguistic tone.

Great performance for an okay book

I only listened to this for class. The performers made it bearable. I personally didn't enjoy the book's contents.

Narrators came up short on intriguing FL novel

The audio editors should have corrected the pronunciation of countless words - ibis, conch, Pahokee . . . misspoken by both narrators. Usually, repeatedly, although for some the pronunciation was corrected later in the audio book. The editor should have called a Floridian and learned the words. That was quite irresponsible.

What it means to lose your mother as a 13 year old

To me, this book is about the impact of the death of a mother on a young girl and her isolated, eccentric, unworldly brother and sister. Ava the brave one, Ava the designated successor to her mother as the next great female alligator wrestler, Ava the fearless, sees herself as carrying on her mother's (disappearing) legacy. Her brother, Kiwi, has similar dreams (unrealistic) of saving the family business. And Osceola falls into an unreal world of her own. And in the end, Ava's fearlessness and Kiwi's dumb luck (the result of his unrelenting efforts to make something of himself) save the three of them. There's one surprisingly disturbing scene, but I guess it was necessary. I grew to like the female narrator, realizing that her young girl's voice was right for the role. And I liked the male narrator's interjection of energy and disbelief in reading the chapters about Kiwi's adventures.

I think it could have been better.

I was disappointed because for me it was a fictional story that had too much unpleasant , unresolved reality to it . Alltough the narrators were excellent.

Amateur Hour

I should have heeded all the "terrible reader" reviews. The female narrator has an annoying habit of putting the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle, making the text momentarily incomprehensible. It's hard enough to stay interested in the story without the distraction of having to translate the reader's mispronunciations. The male reader is better, but I almost gave up on the book before he appeared in chapter 6. The characters are even less interesting than the story. And who would name a family amusement park the World of Darkness? Talk about your heavy-handed symbolism. From the amusement park name to the female narrator, Swamplandia is amateur hour for far too many of its 13 hours.