Swamplandia!

Swamplandia!
By Karen Russell
Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. 315 pgs. Fiction

On a small island in the rural swamplands of Florida lives Ava Bigtree and her family. They run a tourist attraction headlining Ava’s mother, Hilola, who swims with and wrestles the alligator. Business was never booming but when Hilola dies of cancer the family is left with a gaping hole and no star performer for Swamplandia!. The family begins to crumble apart as Grandpa’s dementia requires he be sent to a home on the mainland; Ava’s brother’s resentment of their father’s desperate attempts to keep the park open eventually forces him to run away from home; her sister hides from her disappointing life by communing with the spirits which haunt the swamp; and Ava is left trying to hold the family together as she desperately clings to the only life she has ever known.

Florida’s Everglades is a great setting for an interesting coming of age story and family drama. However, I never felt a real connection to the characters or their stories. Ava’s older brother, Kiwi, was the most believable or at least the most accessible of the characters and his efforts to acclimate himself to life off the island were some of my favorite parts of the story. But I felt the ending was unexpectedly dark and a bit contrived leaving me somewhat unsettled.

CZ