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How long does it take to read Swamplandia!?

Karen Russell

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell takes about 7 hours 38 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 7 hours 38 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2000. 416 pages, about 114,400 words.

16 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 12 hours 43 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 38 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 46 minutes

The page count is the median across 19 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline. And Swamplandia!, the family's island home and theme park, in the Florida Everglades, has sophisticated competition - The World of Darkness. Ava is a resourceful, but terrified twelve-year-old, who must manage seventy gators, and the vast landscape of her grief. Her mother, Swamplandia!'s star attraction, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; her Grandpa has been sent to an old folk's home; her brother has defected to The World of Darkness to keep the family afloat; and her father is AWOL. To save them, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.

Subjects: Death, Mothers, Motherless families, Girls, Fiction, Amusement parks

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