There are some books that give you both a gut punch and a heartache at the same time. This is one of those. Karen Russell is one of my favorite authors, and this year I have read three of her books. She has a wild, weird way of dissecting the world through the wild, weird microcosm of Florida. She creatively uses point of view in Swamplandia!, giving us the first-person voice of Ava Bigtree while casting other point-of-view characters in third person narration. This allows the reader to ache and hope and fail and succeed with Ava, our hearts breaking with each step. Oh, and did I mention--this is one hilarious book.
New York Times Bestseller | Pulitzer Prize Finalist
"Ms. Russell is one in a million. . . . A suspensfuly, deeply haunted book."--The New York Times
Thirteen-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.
Hamnet is a tour-de-force of love, grief, and redemption. The fictional story of Shakespeare's only son, the novel recreates the life of Agnes (Anne) Hathaway and Shakespeare's close family members in poignant scenes and language. While Hamnet is a heavy read--the depictions of grief are excruciating and long and very true to life--it is worth reading for the brilliance of the language and the imaginative cathartic ending.
WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021 'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times 'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell
TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.
This is Paulette Jiles's first novel. It tells the story of Adair Colley, a Southern woman from blood-stained Missouri who is imprisoned during the Civil War. Reminiscent of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, Adair journeys home after winning her freedom through ever-present danger and uncertainty. (Her trek ends more happily than Inman's.) Although I enjoyed the story, I wished we would have seen more of the "Enemy Women" who shared Adair's cell, for this aspect of the Civil War was new to me. I also wish Jiles would have used quotation marks on the dialogue in this book. At times, I was pulled out of the story as I tried to figure out if someone was speaking or if the words were interior monologue.
"A gritty, memorable book ... it is a delight from start to finish, without a single misstep." Tracy Chevalier
Missouri, 1865. Adair Colley and her family have managed to hide from the bloody Armageddon of the American Civil War, but finally even their remote mountain farm cannot escape the plundering greed of the Union militia. Her house is burnt, her father beaten and dragged away. With fierce determination, Adair sets out after him on foot. So begins an extraordinary voyage which will see Adair herself denounced as a Confederate spy and thrown in jail. Here she falls passionately in love…
The story of the Ludlow Massacre near Trinidad, Colorado in 1914 is one of those little known, rarely discussed tragedies of U.S., labor, and Colorado history. A quick summary of events: The United Mine Workers of America organized the miners of the southern coalfields of Colorado, many of whom were employees of John D. Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel & Iron. Violence ensued, and the Colorado National Guard was called in to keep the peace. Corruption of the force ensued, and eventually bad actors burned the tent colony where the strikers were living, killing two women and eleven children. I learned about the Ludlow Massacre from a teacher in high school, Rich Bonacquista, whose grandfather fought at Ludlow. The injustice of the event stuck with me, and in 2012, I wrote a fictional version of it. Although the characters are from my imagination, the events recounted in my novel are historically accurate and still timely today.
