Swamplandia! (Karen Russell)

Swamplandia! is a Florida tourist attraction featuring alligator wrestling and a family steeped in its own mythical history, fallen on hard times after the mother of the family dies and a slick tourist attraction on the mainland draws away all the customers. One by one the family members leave the island, each trying in some individual fashion to find a new future for them all. The author paints both the human drama of the family and the overwhelming, lazy explosion of life in the swamp with heartbreaking clarity. At times the story wanders a little far into the mists of unreality for my taste, and there was a certain distance from the experiences of the characters, even in the parts of the story told in first person from inside the experience of young Ava Bigtree. Still, I never stopped wanting to know what came next.