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)

Sometimes it’s worth listening to upsetting or brutal events, because the story is so deep or meaningful. Not this book

I’m not sure why I keep listening even when I don’t like a book. I suppose I’m waiting for something to make the experience worthwhile. It never happened with Swamplandia.

Do not allow Arielle Sitrick to narrate your book!

There could be no better example of how the wrong narrator can ruin a book than this. While I imagine I would have had problems with Swamplandia in any case, Ms. Sitrick reads in a flat monotone, which is hardly what the book requires. She mispronounces words, she puts emphasis on the wrong syllables, she's generally a disaster, and it's extremely difficult to listen to her. Not so her co-narrator, David Ackroyd, who unfortunately reads only a small portion of the book. This was, alas, an infuriating experience.

Choose to read this one instead of listen

The narration by Arielle Sitrick really took away from this book. It was very poor quality -- flat with a lot of swallowed words and very little emotion. Compared in-book with the narration of David Ackroyd she pales even more in comparison. Mr. Ackroyd's section were vastly superior. I have to say I was very disappointed and surprised by this lack of talent.

When I finished listening to the book and thought about it I did realize that the story actually has something to it worth reading and worth thinking about. In this case I wish I had just read it. I've never felt that way about an audiobook before.

Weird to boring to unlistenable!

Tried, but could not get into this bizarre and eventually too disturbing story. I did finish it with gritted teeth, to see how it ended, but the ending was nothing great either. This book was not for me and I usually like stories about quirky characters, strange settings, and even "disturbing" or mature topics. Not recommended.

Someone picked the wrong person to read!

Would you be willing to try another one of Arielle Sitrick and David Ackroyd ’s performances?

No, I thought the female reader was awful. Every few minutes, I would have to ask, "what did she just say?" Her pronunciation and enunciation were very poor. Not what you look for in an audible book.

Horrible, Horrible Production

I'll finish it for the story but...

1. The female narrator is one of the worst I've heard. She cannot differentiate between voices. I get that the first part is from the perspective of a 12yr old but hiring a 12yrs old to read it was the wrong decision.

2. The male narrator is the wrong choice as well. 60yr old white men trying to do accents make me cringe.

3. Whoever produced and recorded this mess deserves shunning. from the audiobook community. They recorded the female narrator with so much treble, I had to kill the treble and midrange just to listen to it. Ok. Fine. BUT...then they switch narrators and I've got to AGAIN redo the equalizer to continue to listen.

Did anyone even do a quick quality check on this or consider if the readers' voices were compatible?

I wouldn't be so angry if the writing and the story weren't so lovely. You've really done the author a disservice on this. This is the worst produced book since the Ron Miscavage book where the last syllable of pretty much every sentence was cut off.

Starts at Chapter 12.

Audible started at Chapter 12. I had to get a book to make any sense of it, then switch back.

Spoiler ALERT!

No characters, no plot, no point. Don't waste your time. It this is a 'prize winning' book, then it is the booby prize!

A Surprising Disappointment

I just didn't like it. My boyfriend and I read it together and we both felt a real sense of disappointment. Did we just not "get" the hype? Were we missing something? I felt disjointed most of the time like it was really two novels spliced together - one trying to work its way under the magical realism genre and the other a sort of coming of age humorous one. The result for me was muddled, and maybe I just don't like magical realism or maybe Russell was working just a little too hard at making this a quirky novel. It hit me hardest when I realized what was happening to Ava....and didn't care. Yup, I just didn't care what really happened to any of these characters and, in the end, that's not the way to endear the reader. Oh well.

Terrible reader, unlistenable

I had to put this audiobook down after just an hour. It is unlistenable. Flat delivery, very unprofessional. A grown professional would be so much more credible, even for this role. Sad, it seemed so promising. Maybe it is not the girls fault.