Nature Girl

Tired of authors with blatant agendas, whether I agree or not. Always ruins the story to feel manipulated. Bad book.

Lots of crazy characters that had me intrigued but the story just kept dragging. Couldn't stand the main female character. Couldn't finish it.

The worst book I've read in years. A boring, senseless story with nothing to recommend it.

[[ASIN:B003156BDG Nature Girl]]I usually enjoy reading the works of Carl Hiaasen, and Nature Girl proved to be no exception. However, instead of reading this gem I listened to Jane Curtin read it, which certainly put a nice spin on it for me. You can tell the professional actors from amateurs like me easily. Her voice characterizations made all the characters breathe a little bit more lively.

I might explain that Hiaasen's books usually sound inside my head like an old drunk muttering to himself in a bar (which I guess says more about me than I should commit the the never-forgetting Interwebs), while Jane Curtin's reading imbues each character with a presence that a senile alcoholic can't quite match. I adored her reading of the Native American Sammy Tigertail's hallucinations about the dead white guy he dumped in the swamp. Hysterical, and that's just the beginning.

Nature Girl features all the usual types of colorful characters we have come to expect from Hiaasen: slightly crazy women, practical men who love them, innocents caught up in madness and a psycho with missing parts (why is this a constant? Can someone explain that to me?). Toss in a divorce detective, a sleazy telephone solicitor and his soon-to-be ex-wife and you have A Midsummer Night's Dream, minus the fancy prose.

Can't recommend it too highly.

I should point out that, amazingly enough, Audible has managed to charge TWICE the price of the CD version for their almost-free-for-them-to-deliver downloadable files, which I understand have DRM anyway. Be smart and buy the CD. It's just silly any other way.

While NO Carl Hiaasen book could conceivably be called 'bad,' this one certainly isn't one of the better ones.

For one thing, there's a limited cast of characters here: most of the action involves three couples, with three or four supporting characters. Secondly, the geography is limited: about two-thirds of the book takes place on one island off the coast of Florida. Finally, the plot, set into motion by (of all things) an unwanted telemarketer's call, seems a little thin for the usually maniacally inventive Hiaasen. I hesitate to say so, but compared to the best of his books this one seems phoned in.

Character-wise, there's nothing new here. We have the two or three wise, tolerant, and put-upon women; the male ex with issues but a heart of gold; the precocious, likeable kid; the oddball, but wise and knowing native American; and the villains, one horrible and slimy and the other weak and slimy. Throw in the Everglades, some sex, and pokes at consumer culture, corporations, and out-of-staters, and this feels like a Hiaasen book by the numbers. The addition of a weird cult on a neighboring cay really seemed a throw-in, a kind of outdated poke at New Agers.

As I say, the book was entertaining, but unlike most Hiaasen which I devour in a few sittings, this one was definitely put-downable for me. It took me, in the end, a couple of months to read it.

Let's hope it's an aberration, not the beginning of a trend with this very funny, imaginative, and enjoyable writer.

One of few books I can read again and again, always enjoying the ride. It would be good for teenagers and adults.

Honey Santana is the book's title character. She's a divorced mom living with her soon to be teenaged son in what she considers God's own country, the Florida Everglades. When Boyd Shreave, an obnoxious telemarketer from Texas, interrupts her dinner she over reacts. Instead of just hanging up and forgetting the whole thing, she devises a complex plan to exact revenge on the hapless Mr. Shreave.
Much of the story unfolds on Dismal Key, an uninhabited island in the western Everglades. Plenty of comic adventures ensue as Holly, Boyd and a host of other bizarre Hiaasen characters interact with nature and each other.
A secondary subplot revolves around Sammy Tigertail, a Seminole Indian whose father was white. By coincidence, Sammy finds himself hiding out on Dismal Key and quite inadvertently becomes part of the comic mayhem.
Nature Girl is filled with the type of humor Carl Hiaasen is famous for; cynical, at times cruel, over-the-top and often laugh out loud funny. Highly recommended to fans of Florida based humor with uncompromising sting.

Great book for early teens

it is an interesting story line, flows easily and keeps the reader's interest to the end. It's an easy read for someone looking for something not too serious but still entertaining.

Entertaining, but not one of Hiassen's best. His novels are always amusing, often laugh-out-loud funny. The humor is a cover for his deep-seated anger at the despoilers of Florida. His targets in this book are the white men who drove the Seminoles deep into the Everglades, telephone solicitors, and physically disgusting men who paw women without an invitation. It has the usual cast of kooky characters and lots of local color.