Which leaves twelve-year-old Ava and sixteen-year-old Kiwi to try to salvage the bankrupt wreck the family park has become. Dad is pretty delusional about the family’s prospects. Ossie, the waifish older sister, is having an affair with a ghost. Mom, the star of the show, recently passed away. A family who lives in an amusement park in a swamp, wrestling alligators and entertaining fat tourists-that’s fun. Even the atmospherics, which had been so taut and engrossing in her short stories, grew so diffuse and lackluster over a few hundred pages that they lost all their power.

Be careful what you wish for you could wind up with a big sprawling messy novel, filled with inconsistent characters, a terribly paced plot arc, a horribly disappointing ending, and very little reward for the long slog. Here was, finally, what I’d always been so sure I wanted: a writer whose stories I’d loved, not only writing a novel, but taking as its kernel one of the very stories I’d wanted expanded! But it turns out that I was totally wrong. So I hope you see why I was super excited for Swamplandia!. The stories were so great! Her spooky ambiance, her weird haunting language, her creepy ideas and wonderful stories… I was so disappointed that they were over so quickly, just when I was getting enmeshed in her strange worlds. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was a perfect example. And Karen Russell’s debut collection, St.

They’re such a letdown! Why go to the trouble of setting a scene, peopling it with interesting characters, working up momentum, and then… ending it? Just when things were starting to get good? Come on, lazy author, why'd you stop?! This drives me totally crazy. Let’s start with this: I hate short stories. Perhaps it should force me to reexamine deeply held prejudices, or at least preferences, which would make me grow as a reader and a person, ultimately making me more open-minded, forgiving, and calm. Perhaps it was a back-handed slap against wish-fulfillment. Perhaps Swamplandia! is a case of being careful what you wish for.

Hey, it's my latest (and meanest) review for CCLaP! I also put this on my CCLaP best-of-2011 list-for best total disappointment.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell