I finished this almost a week ago, but I'm just now getting around to writing about it. Actually there are three things that I find challenging about this endeavor, and I will present them in order of difficulty from easiest to hardest:
1) Starting the book - Often, I will carry a book around everywhere I go with the best intentions of getting started on it. It will go with me out to the car if I am going to Starbucks, but then I wind up buying a paper to do the crossword and sudoku. I'll carry it back inside, but then get distracted with a TV show or web surfing. I'll take it to the library and wind up reading something else while I'm there. I probably put more wear and tear on a book prior to starting it than I do the entire time I am reading it.
2) Finishing the book - You would think I'd be in a hurry to find out how it ends, but I often find that as plot threads start to wrap up, I flash back to various parts of the book, rehashing and trying to remember details such that the last 50 pages are read in short bursts with numerous distractions in between.
3) Writing about the book - This is probably the hardest part and one of the reasons I am doing the blog portion of the excercise - to force me to write without getting so hung up about it. I have a tendency to not want to get started until I have the whole thing mapped out in my head. By forcing myself to write about each book, and throwing it out there for everybody to read, it helps me get over some of the anxiety that I've experienced in the past about writing. That's right - it's therapy.
So enough about that, let's get on with the book review.
It's summer, so you'll excuse me if I escape into a few popular titles. Carl Hiaasen is one of my favorite pop fiction writers. I've read three of his other books: Skin Tight, Native Tongue, and Strip Tease - and yes, the book is funnier than the movie. Sure he's formulaic, but it's an entertaining format, at least for me.
Some of the features of the formula:
1) The books seem to be always about Florida.
2) There are always absurdly wacky characters.
3) There is always an environmental and/or social theme.
4) The various characters are thrust into each others lives through an improbable series of events.
5) There's a heavy dose of sex and sexual themes, often with a kinky twist.
6) One or more of the characters are usually mentally ill and/or heavily medicated on pills or booze.
There's a blurb from the The Sunday Times (London) on the dust jacket that sums up Hiaasen's writing: "The undisputed master of organized chaos." On this front Nature Girl does not disappoint. Honey Santana is a divorced mother with a teenaged son and she lives in a trailer in the Florida Everglades. She is bipolar and seems to be mildly schizophrenic as well, as she almost always has not one, but two songs playing in her head simultaneously. Holly takes umbrage with a telemarketer who interrupts her dinnertime with her son and then proceeds to insult her when she chastises him for the rude nature of the call. She devises a plan to get even with him - she doesn't want to kill him, she just wants to teach him some manners - by turning the tables and luring him to the Everglades with a bogus telemarketing pitch and a free eco-tour
The telemarketer, Boyd Shreave sees this as an opportunity to prove to his mistress Eugenie Fonda, who has become bored with him, that he is capable of spontaneity. He convinces her to come along, and tells his wife Lily, who he has not been having sex with, that he has aphenphosmphobia, a fear of being touched, and that he is going to a specialized clinic in Florida for treatment. Lily pretends to believe him, but she had already hired a private investigator a while ago, and he has photographic proof of Boyd and Eugenie's affair, capturing Eugenie performing a rather intimate act on Boyd in a rather public place. Although the photographs would be more than enough to file for divorce, this is not enough for Lily, and she instructs the investigator that she wants pornographic close-ups of the actual act of intercourse, causing him to follow Boyd and Eugenie to the Everglades.
No less important to the story are Sammy Tigertail, the half-white Seminole who talks to the dead, and is hiding in the Everglades for fear that he will be blamed for the death of a tourist, and his "hostage" Gillian, who insists on staying with him despite several efforts to get her to leave him alone. Holly takes Boyd and Eugenie out in kayaks and winds up setting up on the same island where Tigertail is hiding out. They are followed by the investigator, the disgusting Louis Piejack, a fishmonger who is obsessed with Honey Santana and will stop at nothing to have her, and Honey's ex-husband and their son, who are trying to protect her from Piejack.
Hopefully this gives you a taste of some of the wacky plots and subplots that make up this tale. Is this great literature? Of course not. Is it entertaining summer reading? I think so.
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