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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hiassen gets in some wicked licks,
By
This review is from: Native Tongue (Mass Market Paperback)
I picked up Hiassen's "Sick Puppy" at random a couple years back, and then rushed right out and grabbed this one. Nitrous oxide has nothing on these two elevators. I haven't laughed so hard, so continuously, since P.G. Wodehouse ushered me into the presence of the immortal Jeeves thirty years ago.Hiassen's work seems to divide neatly into the early stuff, up through Skin Tight, which inhabits the same danger-ridden, darkly comic territory as Elmore Leonard, with similarly razor-edged dialogue; and the later stuff, which forms a genre of its own, savagely satirical farces that cast credibility and all sense of human decency and restraint to the winds in order to skewer every form of foible and malefaction. I love them both, but prefer the latter, to which "Native Tongue" squarely belongs. Here the targets range from Sea World to Disney to phone sex purveyors and their clients to fuzzy animal lovers to bodybuilders to birdwatchers. With his usual heaping helpings of lawyers, developers, politicians, and like members of the lower criminal orders. Not least among them, tied like Pauline to the railroad tracks of imminent extinction, those adorable blue-tongued mango voles. And you won't want to miss a single savory chunk of kabob on the master's shish. I notice that the reviewers all seem to like best the first Hiassen they happened to read, and I'm no exception. This one, "Sick Puppy", and his first entry , "Tourist Season", by me are the champs. But I suspect if you were to ask Carl for his favorite, he'd direct you straight here to his Cage au Voles, because this is the one where he got to lampoon the South Florida theme park - an excrescence so dear to his heart that he made it the subject of "Team Rodent", his only nonfiction volume to date.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A review of Carl Hiaasen's NATIVE TONGUE,
By A Customer
This review is from: Native Tongue (Mass Market Paperback)
Although I am that rare creature who was born and bred in Florida, you don't have to be a native Floridian to be taken over by Carl Hiaasen's NATIVE TONGUE. The characters are just too weird to be real and yet, when you think about it, you know you've met people like them, just not quite as overt about it. From the eco-hippie ex-governor of Florida to the guy who meets his dimise in a most unusual aquatic encounter, they will grab you by the throat and won't let go till the last page has been turned. As for the plot, well, it's got more twists and turns than a sailor's knot and a lot more laughs too. The really neat trick that Hiaasen pulls on you is that his fiction gives you the sad truth in a way that keeps you from crying. This has to be the funniest book I've ever read.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
More like Hiaasen-lite,
By DFW Book Lover (Texas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Native Tongue (Hardcover)
Dang, Carl, how could you?
Let me start by saying that CH is one of my favorite writers. His stories aren't necessarily epic in nature but his dialog & characterizations & writing in general are virtually beyond reproach. Even though his storylines border on slice-of-life rather than edge-of-your-seat thrillers, Hiaasen's writing is typically so good, his books are still extremely entertaining page-turners. That said, Native Tongue was quite a letdown for me. Usually I'll finish a book like this in one or two days. I struggled for almost two weeks to finish it, putting it down at the drop of a hat. In his defense, this was one of Hiaasen's earlier efforts. Everything since Native Tongue has been infinitely better. If you're new to Hiaasen, don't let this book turn you off. His other works are definitely worth reading.
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