Ms Russell has produces a rich and humid world of spirits and dreams, buzzing mosquitoes and prehistoric reptiles, baby-green cocoplums and marsh rabbits, and musty old tomes about heroes and spells. With Ava she has created a goofy and self-conscious girl who is young enough to hope that all darkness has an answering lightness. Inevitably she must learn otherwise. Swamplandia! is ultimately about the aching beauties of youth - the way life begins with such dumb sweetness, while the lessons that give it meaning lurk around each bend like terrifying gators in a mossy fragrant swamp

The tale of the two flyaway sisters proves lyrically powerful as it maps the enchanted but dangerous worlds that young minds can conjure to deal with grief

It's a wonderfully extravagant, eccentric story by a brilliant young writer with an amazing imagination

I was looking forward to Swamplandia! and I wasn't disappointed. I found this novel beautifully written and very witty, yet often extremely sad too

The Miami-born writer renders the travails and delights of a...dreamlike world that leaves you intoxicated and slightly dishevelled

When you start reading a book, it's either sink or swim. With Karen Russell's Swamplandia, set in the alligator-infested Florida Everglades, we dove right in and never came up for air... Russell deftly dips into several story lines. And though she trolls some pretty dark waters (abandonment, consumerism, hungry swamp things), there's magic in discovering how everyone stays afloat

Russell details peculiarities about the alligators (known as Seths) to fascinating effect and skillfully satirizes the greed and fraudulence of entertainment corporations

The book certainly abounds in clever and striking images: alligators have "icicle overbites" and Hilola's children "watch her sink into her own face" as she dies of cancer

Russell's primeval imaginings and gutsy language lurk long in the memory

The novel packs a genuine punch

[Russell] is certainly very talented...This novel has already received great reviews...and it's easy to see why. Many of her descriptions are quite dazzling

Her imagination is undoubtedly of unbounded proportions, and she creates a refreshingly unique community and seductively charms the reader...[Russell] is a refreshing change from the usual.

Ava's narrative occupies fertile territory half-way between realism and fantasy, innocence and experience... Russell leaves just enough for us to question our reading of events, so that when the scales fall from Ava's eyes we are implicated in her naivety

We unanimously loved it - to the point where words like 'genius' and 'masterpiece' were being bandied around. With figurative language enriching every sentence, Russell effortlessly transports the reader

This novel [is] beautifully written and very witty, yet often extremely sad too

On one level, this is a sweet, slightly sentimental comin-of-age story; on another, it is a postmodern satire

Russell is really finding her feet with this one, making good on the promise of her eerie debut

A testament to a truly vivid imagination

Russell creats a vivid sense of how reality and fantasy can intertwine in a child's mind and become indistinguishable... What comes through most powerfully in Russell's fertile prose is the humid, mosquito-ridden atmosphere of the Florida swamp and the beguiling strangeness of the creatures - humans included - that make it their home

The novel is an experiment in how children's minds comprehend loss, and Ava is a compelling guide...Russell's strength is her use of language: each sentence is vividly rendered and the pages are as dense with images as the island is with life

Might be read as a quietly suspenseful, and angry, judgement on postwar culture

A seemingly slight work that is, in fact, possessed of almost infinite depth. It's an elegant inquiry into what we can know and how we can know it - and it's gripping too

It sets off a moving meditation on ageing, regret and the unreliability of memory

Has rightly been praised for its economy and elegance

Belatedly and deservedly, this was the year of Julian Barnes

Exquisitely written and deeply engaging

Elegant verbal exactness, analytic finesse and a witty portrayal of contemporary and 1960's life complement the intricate plot

A worthy Booker laureate of this or any other year, our most versatile novelist...a perfect present in these last days of the book as a singular object

A worthy winner of this year's Booker prize: short, but certainly not slight, precise and insightful

This novel packed more emotion into its 150 pages than any other I have read this year

Melancholic, suspenseful and thought-provoking

Several plot twists later, what started off as a thoughtful (and fascinating) meditation on memory becomes something close to a full blown thriller

Essential reading for any writer, aspiring or otherwise

A meditation on memory and regret slyly conveyed through the unreliable voice of a complacent man whose past gives him a nasty surprise

A deserving winner

Masterful, gripping and, above all, surprising

Barnes has always has an ear for the bleak comedy of the first person

Novel, fertile and memorable

Julian Barnes’ Man-Booker prize-winning novel has extraordinary power and emotional density

An eloquent meditation on relationships, emotional arrogance and the discomfort of remorse

The key to this slender, tantalizing mystery is on its opening page: what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed

His art is artful, often openly so, but never showy or obvious

Described in Justin Cartwright’s review as 'a very fine book, skillfully plotted, boldly conceived’

I am eager to read it, though I hear it needs to be read twice to be fully appreciated