Native Tongue (Paperback)

~ (Author) "ON JULY 16, in the aching torpid heat of the South Florida summer, Terry Whelper stood at the Avis counter at Miami International Airport and..." (more)
Key Phrases: whale tank, blue oxford shirt, Bud Schwartz, Joe Winder, Danny Pogue (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Writing like an Edward Abbey of South Florida, Hiaasen ( Skin Tight ) sets his reluctant journalist hero after a morally corrupt real estate developer planning to build an 18-hole golf course on North Key Largo. Burned out as an investigative reporter for a Miami newspaper, Joe Winder now writes PR releases for the Amazing Kingom of Thrills, a sleazy theme park owned by Francis X. Kingsbury, who hopes to increase his fortune with a nearby golf resort. When Winder learns that the purportedly last living pair of blue-tongued mango voles, recently stolen centerpieces of the Rare Animal Pavilion, are not an endangered species as claimed, he joins the forces opposed to his boss. These include the Mothers of Wilderness, an organization of well-heeled blue-haired activists, and a semi-crazy recluse named Skink, a former Florida governor who has become a sort of Robin Hood of the Keys. Hiaasen keeps a broad cast of zany characters--Winder's girlfriend answers the phone for a call-in porn service; a steroid-crazed, weight-lifting ex-cop ingests hormones from a portable IV--moving at a breakneck clip. Murders (one accomplished by an amorous rogue dolphin), explosive revenge taken on land-moving machinery, the triumphs of love found and principles regained, and the singular environment of the Florida Keys are ingredients of this sometimes scattershot but always inventive entertainment. 50,000 first printing; BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Imagine you're driving a rented Chrysler LeBaron convertible to the perfect family vacation at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills when a rat is tossed into your car by a passing pickup. The rodent in question is not a rat, but a rare blue-tongued mango vole just liberated from the Kingdom by the militant Wildlife Rescue Corps. Welcome to the world of Native Tongue , where dedicated (if somewhat demented) environmentalists battle sleazy real estate developers in the Florida Keys. Hiaasen reminds one of Harry Crews in his depiction of a South full of eccentric people involved in crazy schemes. It is a measure of the writer's talent that no matter how bizarre the situation, it is believable. Late in the book a character laments his predicament as "an irresistible convergence of violence, mayhem and mortality!" If he had added nonstop hilarity, he would have had a perfect description of this book. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/91.
- Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (May 9, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044669570X
• ISBN-13: 978-0446695701
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #64,370 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hiassen gets in some wicked licks, May 22, 2002

By	Royce E. Buehler "figvine" (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A review of Carl Hiaasen's NATIVE TONGUE, September 28, 1997

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.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ultra-sleezoid characters, July 23, 2003

By	Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Native Tongue (Mass Market Paperback)

Carl Hiaasen has a delightfully warped mind. "Thank God," his devoted readers will say. Like his others, this book is set in a very bizarre country known as South Florida. And all of his baddie characters are intent on exploiting the environment or scamming tourists. Native Tongue begins with a family vacation being `disrupted' when a rat - uh, no, a rare weirdo vole - is tossed into their rental car. A convertible: perfect for rat-tossing. Insane and inane but dedicated environmentalists are pitted against the usual bad guys: real estate developers and environment rapists.
Four stars.