“Wonderfully imaginative.” - The Seattle Times Like the state itself, Swamplandia! is a crossroads where the wild and the tame, the spectacular and the mundane meet underneath the hubbub of the fantastic lies a family of misfits at sea in their grief-theirs is a story that is as ordinary as it is heartbreaking.” - Boston Globe “A spook-house masterpiece.” - Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Beautiful, dark, and funny.” - Rolling Stone A novel of idiosyncratic and eloquent language hyperreal, Technicolor settings and larger-than-life characters who are nonetheless heartbreakingly vulnerable and keenly emotional. “If no such thing as the Great Floridian Novel already existed, consider it done. “Seduces before you’ve turned the first page.” - People “The bewitching Swamplandia! is a tremendous achievement.” - Entertainment Weekly will lodge in the memories of anyone lucky enough to read Swamplandia!” - The New York Times Book Review This family, wrestling with their desires and demons. “Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride. Russell has deep and true talent.” - San Francisco Chronicle “ has thrown the whole circus of her heart onto the page, safety nets be damned. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness.Īs Ava sets out on a mission through the magical swamps to save them all, we are drawn into a lush and bravely imagined debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of reality.

Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades.

Selected for the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 One of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists

Swamplandia hbo