![]() ![]() ![]() An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction. 315 pages 25 cm Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the swamp in order to save her familys dynasty of Bigtree alligator wrestling. ![]() In 2009 she received a 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation and last year she made The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 list. Avas father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.Īgainst a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a familys struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. Karen Russell, the gifted author of the debut novel Swamplandia, has been making quite a name for herself the last few years. Avas mother, the parks 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. The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |