Customer Reviews

Star Island

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(71)
3 star:		(54)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

The wacky and wonderful Carl Hiaasen returns to his Florida stomping grounds for his latest comic caper "Star Island." Loading the novel and his characters with the over-the-top eccentricities you might expect from such a warped mind (no offense Carl--you're my kind of guy)--Hiaasen uses his signature style to brutally satirize the notion of celebrity in an era of sleazy tabloid journalism. It's an easy target--to be sure--maybe too easy and familiar. But Hiaasen can spin a tale and "Star Island" is a repugnantly entertaining romp even if you wish Hiaasen would have set his sights a bit higher!

Cherry Pye epitomizes everything that is disturbing about modern celebrity. With a lack of talent, but backed by an ambitious team, Cherry has risen to teenage stardom despite an obliviousness to her surroundings. Keeping Cherry's image somewhat intact amidst rampant promiscuity and drug use is a full time job for an entire entourage of handlers. With self-promoting parents, a pair of publicists surgically enhanced to appear identical, a desperate record label executive, a wannabe boyfriend, a stand-in to handle social events when Cherry is incapacitated, and a new body guard with a weed whacker in place of an arm--Hiaasen has compiled enough hilariously repellant characters to fill several novels! Add a corpulent paparazzo who's practically stalking Cherry to her death and an ex-politician who has turned into a rogue environmental terrorist and "Star Island" is overflowing with local color!

I think the primary criticism that some readers might have with "Star Island" is its lack of a real heart--none of the characters proves to be an identifiable protagonist. Cherry's double Ann is positioned as the piece's true hero (many characters instantly love and/or admire her), but her sarcasm isn't particularly heart-warming and she's riding the same opportunistic train that every one else is. Don't get me wrong, I liked Ann fine--I just don't think she served exactly the role Hiaasen set her up for. To be fair, "Star Island" is no "up-with-people" feel good hit, though. It is the grotesque underbelly of stardom and the parasites that feed off of it. And that works for me--I like that sort of thing! I plowed through "Star Island"--it is good and dirty fun!

Typical Hiaasen fare for those familiar with his earlier work. You get your fill of satyrical South Florida situations and cartoonish characters that are worth an occasional chuckle. The narrative is fast-paced and inventive as ever and the dialogue is spot-on for the tone of the novel.
What ultimately disappointed me was its shallowness. Hiaasen throws in the usual cast of weirdos along with his pet villains, land developers, who are superfluous to the story and just exist to establish Skink in it in his most improbable of interventions.
At the end, not even the characters seem to know how to wrap up this story, so it just kind of fizzles out, and all the loose ends receive neat little one-paragraph tourniquets akin to those "what happened to..." titles in the final credits of some movies.
Cardboard characters and a muddy ending. Not his best work by far.

I'm a huge fan and pre-ordered this book based on my love of previous Carl Hiaasen books and what I thought was a can't miss premise. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

The thing I loved about the author's previous novels was that even though the characters were bizarre - they had a depth and an underlying humanity that made them vibrant. That is completely lacking in this book. Even the 'cameo' characters from previous books seem like caricatures of themselves.

Overall, I found myself grinding through pages to get to the thrown together finale. I also thought that the epilogue was perfunctory.

Here's hoping that Mr. Hiaasen can rediscover some of the magic that made him one of my favorite authors in the past.

Skink's back, older, perhaps wiser, but definitely as eco-warrior fun and friendly as ever. Along with a cast of newly minted crazies (and one memorable acquaintance from earlier books), _Star Island_ is classic Hiaasen. It doesn't replace _Stormy Weather_ or _Skinny Dip_ as my favorite but it's definitely a "must read" for Hiaasen fans. If you haven't read his earlier books, do yourself a favor and read at least his first three or four books in sequence (by publication date) before tackling this one. There's some rich background you'll appreciate more if you read the early books. One extremely minor blooper (blooperette?): digital cameras don't have motor drives. Nothing to do with any plot points just one of those little techie slip-ups that threw me off the flow of the story for a few minutes. Like a typo or misplaced geography, it's something avoidable that should have been caught but certainly doesn't detract from the story. And thanks to the publisher for immediate availability of the Kindle edition -- being able to start reading just after midnight on release day is wonderful for obsessive fans (like me).

This book is proof of Hiaasen's eco-warrior cred--everything in it seemed recycled.

Characters like Skink and Jim Tile are back for their umpteenth cameos and even the new characters seem like lame retreads from other Hiassen books. Did the surgically enhanced twin publicists of this book remind anyone else of the surgically altered human Barbie Dolls of "Sick Puppy?"

Descriptive elements within the book are repeated to the point of annoyance. How many times does Hiassen need to remind us that Skink has a glass eye and has shotgun shells in his hair or the rotund paparazzo is sweaty and smelly? How many times do we need to hear that bodyguard number one had a thing in his thing or witness bodyguard number two employ his prosthetic weed-wacker?

The paper-thin plot seems to run around in aimless circles before collapsing from pointless exhaustion.

As someone who has been delighted and charmed by Hiaasen's previous outings, I was utterly bored and ultimately annoyed by this one. I've seen every trick on display in "Star Island" in his earlier works, but in his other books the tricks were done much better and to some kind of end.

Wow. A new Hiaasen book is cause for joy in my house, but I'm shocked at how disappointing this book was.

Sure, it's got a lot of what makes a Hiaasen book a lot of fun: a parade of nuts, nit-wits, sociopaths, crooks, narcissists, corrupt officials, perverts, dedicated but pragmatic cops, clueless tourists and one plucky gal who knows the score. And we get treated to an extended appearance by one of his most beloved recurring characters, Skink, aka former Florida governor Clinton Tyree, as well as a return engagement by one of his most memorable psychos, Chemo.

But usually, his books have a character one has to believe is a stand-in for Hiaasen himself, a classic-rock-loving, anti-establishment journalist who gets caught up in all the madness that is South Florida. Well, in this one there's a "journalist" but instead of the protagonist or one of the few relatively sane supporting characters, he's a loathsome paparazzo, completely unappealing (as one would imagine most of them are, of course) and not really a good anchor for an entire story.

It says a lot when one of the most sympathetic characters is Chemo, the waffle-faced psycho with a weed-wacker for a prosthetic hand. Ann, the plucky gal, is O.K. but can't really carry the book by herself.

I think the problem may also be that Hiaasen does better when he is portraying the more obscure and mundane corners of Florida. He seems a little lost portraying the South Beach scene (because, frankly, it's not exactly news that it's full of kooks and drugged-out celebrities), and his attempt to impose Skink into that world doesn't really work.

As others have mentioned, it also fizzles out. The story just . . . stops.

Oh, well, I'm sure we'll get some better adventures from Hiaasen soon.

I'm a huge fan of Carl Hiaasen and have enjoyed most of his novels, although I admittedly had reservations about Star Island. Hiaasen has been on a downward slide in recent years with the mediocre Skinny Dip followed by the disappointing Nature Girl. I picked up Star Island with high hopes and guarded expectations. My trepidation was well-founded. Star Island is a pale imitation of what Hiaasen's novel's used to be and seems to fail on almost every level.

The quirky characters are uninspired and are either too gimmicky or too stereo-typical to be entertaining. The novel is populated with unlikeable characters, which is something that I like, but the problem here is that the unlikeable characters are insipid, tedious, and painfully uninteresting. Much of my problem with this novel may rest in my complete lack of interest in the misbehavior of celebrity pop stars. Mostly though it feels like Hiaasen is looking for people and institutions to satirize and he's run out of ideas and is left with some pretty innocuous targets. Back in the day, when he turned his over-the-top sense of humor on to issues he felt passionate about (greedy land developers, religious wing-nuts, red-neck militia types, tourists and themeparks), the result was hilariously brilliant satire.

There's just no edge to the humor here and as a result it falls flat.

I found myself grinding through this novel. It picks up a little near the end but honestly it took considerable effort to get to the final page. I had no interest in any of these characters. Even characters that had been featured in previous novels (that I liked) seemed to be pale imitations of their former selves. I can't think of anything in this novel that made me laugh. And to top it all off - the murder and mayhem of early novels was completely absent here. There's really nothing here to keep readers turning pages.

I miss the Hiaasen of old. Sadly, I won't have reservations about reading his next novel - I probably won't bother to read it at all. Sigh.

Some of the other reviewers seems pretty hard on STAR ISLAND. No, it's not SICK PUPPY, but it's also not NATURE GIRL.
Yes, Skink seems to be moving more slowly & is getting older, but aren't we all.
It's summer; it's a wonderful Hiaasen novel.
I laughed out loud twice.
Enjoy!

The usual Hiassen hijinx, wittiness, and quirky characters. I have now read ALL of his books - the fiction ones. His books are always just the right length and just the right intensity to be very enjoyable. And always good for a laugh.

Like some other authors, Hiaasen writes for entertainment. While this may not be great literature, it is very funny. It is a contemporary story about a young starlet, pushed into the public eye by her parents and a promoter, who has no real acting or singing talent but has a hot body and the right moves. The young women is also a zoned out druggie who looks for the next man to bonk. She is described as having the attention span of a gerbil (and probably the brain of a gnat). There is also her stand-in double who is needed when her handlers need someone sober, various members of her retinue including the bodyguard Chemo, an obsessed photographer who wants to document her life and death, and various other characters including Tyree.

All of these people together lead to some very interesting situations. The main setting is South Beach, with a few excursions farther afield. There is a saying about the best laid plans of mice and men. In this novel, many things go awry.