A New York Times Top 10 Book of 2011Thirteen-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. 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. As 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.
I wish I would have read this years ago. I might have liked it, the way I liked Russell’s short stories. Years ago. Something changed in me where now this kind of writing just makes me tired.
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13 November, 2010:
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