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

A bold debut.

Brilliantly nauseating.

A sumptuous, supernatural feast... Leaves you wanting more and more as every page turns.

A new world of adventure, romance and delicious horror.

A calm, elegantly observed love story … followed by something altogether more gothic and full-blooded.

Camp, quirky and fun.

An intriguing blend of historical and supernatural fiction.

Owen has smoothly crafted an excellent Gothic tale out of some supposedly exhausted sources of inspiration… The plot is superbly managed, as are the suspenseful changes of perspective

A ripping yarn written with depth and verve

Clever and stylish… Sophisticated

A staggering achievement of a debut… A fantastically atmospheric, engaging, immersive experience

Energetically mixing history and gothic fantasy, this is a macabre, readable and atmospheric novel

It’s all deliciously creepy, and the richly textured depiction of Victorian London is impressively done. The conclusion has you thirsting for more

Brooding and densely plotted, it is ambitious in its scope, but certainly delivers a sleek, well-crafted thriller, ideal for fans of the genre

Rich in detail, rich in style (and quite scary)

Intelligent, and also enormous fun

She manages the rare task of creating a work whose plot, character and tone are all fully developed and work in service of each other… This is a truly great novel. While it has received glowing reviews it is a great shame that it is not more widely known by the general public. I urge you all to pick it up.

Gobsmacking – and terrifying – debut… The story crackles along and its creepy, menacing characters are ideal for haunting your imagination… Don’t pick it up if you like talking to your family during the holidays, as you’ll ignore them until you’ve finished this.