Swamplandia!

Just a quick post, I finally got my lazy ass to finish Karen Russell's "Swamplandia!" (yes it comes with an exclamation point!). I started reading it last month after I finished "Room", or so I think it was "Room" that I finished last. I had high hopes for this book since it consistently ranked as one of the best books of the year it was released (2011).  Honestly I found the prose rather boring, it didn't really hold interest to me. There were times I thought of abandoning the book, I kept waiting for the speed to pick up but it just never came together for me. But a quitter I am not, I powered through and finished it anyway. 

I must say that it got better towards the end when their lives were unraveling. The book is about a family of alligator wrestlers that lived on an island off the Florida swamps. I found it hard picturing the surroundings which was supposedly a beaten up crummy theme park that featured alligators and alligator wrestling. The main protagonist of the book is Ava, the youngest of the Bigtree kids. Personally, I identified more with Kiwi, the oldest of the Bigtree kids. He's more on the bookish-academic side of things. Being home schooled, they were quite innocent of the workings of the life in the mainland they came off as being unprepared for practical requisites of the real world.

The book shifts from a first person voice through Ava and a third person narrative through Kiwi's point of view. I would've loved to read a section on The Chief's background and more on the life of their mother, Hilola.

In the end you couldn't help but be on their side, the book ends before you could get a glimpse of how it ended up for the whole family but you can get snippets here and there specially on the last chapter proving that Ava continued her life on the mainland.

I wonder what I'll read next, my kindle is just bursting at the seams with unread books!