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Carl Hiaasen

Native Tongue Paperback – May 9, 2005

by Carl Hiaasen (Author)

4.3 3,023 ratings

Book 2 of 7: Skink

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Now reissued--one of the most beloved novels by the "New York Times" bestselling author in which dedicated, if somewhat demented, environmentalists battle sleazy real estate developers in the Florida Keys.

Book 2 of 7

Skink
Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Grand Central Publishing
Publication date

May 9, 2005
Dimensions

5.25 x 1.13 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

044669570X
ISBN-13

978-0446695701
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“The world is full of nice boring young men. The crazy ones are hard to find and harder to keep, but it’s worth it.”
Highlighted by 108 Kindle readers
We are all no longer children, Chelsea thought sadly. We are potential co-defendants.
Highlighted by 52 Kindle readers
“Nature is a wonder,” she said. “Such power to renew, or to destroy. It’s an awesome paradox.”
Highlighted by 50 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida. He is the author of nineteen novels, including Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy, Stormy Weather, Basket Case, and, for young readers, Flush and Hoot. He also writes a regular column for the Miami Herald.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grand Central Publishing; unknown edition (May 9, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 044669570X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0446695701
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1.13 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #273,504 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,116 in Fiction Satire
- #2,976 in Humorous Fiction
- #18,892 in Suspense Thrillers

Customer Reviews:
4.3 3,023 ratings

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Carl Hiaasen

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Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida, where he still lives. He is a prize-winning journalist with a regular column in the Miami Herald and many articles in varied magazines. He started writing crime fiction in the early 1980s and has recently branched out into children's books; he has also had several works of non-fiction published.

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4.3 out of 5

3,023 global ratings

5 star		53%
4 star		32%
3 star		11%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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Kindle Customer

Such fun

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 7, 2023

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As usual, a witty comedy of errors where the good guys win as well as the environment all the while serving up hilarious situations and ridiculous people. Love all his books. Why aren't these books talked about more? Love them all!!

One person found this helpful

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Mr D.

Native Tongue, A Whimsical Mystery by Carl Hiaasen

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 29, 2004

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When it come to satire, Carl Hiaasen, a tongue in cheek editorialist for the Miami Herald is a master. Likewise with his dozen or so improbable novels.
This review is about my personal favorite novel from the amusingly wacky mind of Hiaasen, so if you like your mysteries with an off the wall, absurd slant, (more loony than mystery) read on.
The central villain of Native Tongue is Francis X. Kingsbury, he, the boorish owner of a shabby second-rate nature theme park, Amazing Kingdom of Thrills Theme Park, who, with jealous eyes, aspires to be a competitor for Disney World, and consequently, has plans to further rape the environment with an ostentatious condo development and adjoining golf-course.
Our protagonist, who may be a vicarious creation of our author, is Joe Winder a former journalist, who initially goes to work as a PR/Damage Control man for the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills Park. His boss Kingsbury happens to be in a government witness protection program for ratting on John Gotti.
Our Story starts out when a pair of Blue Tongued Mango Voles, an extremely rare endangered species, are stolen from a pavilion at the theme park. The Voles one of the park's premier exhibits strongly resemble rats with a blue tongue. Shortly thereafter a series of murder and mayhem begin and our hero is inextricably drawn in to investigate.
Along the way we get to see a plethora of nutty characters, starting with every Hiaasen fan's favorite, Skink, a former Governor of Florida turned eco-terrorist/hermit. Other wacky characters include, Grandma, a 70-year-old pistol packing member of the Wildlife Rescue Corps, A girlfriend who "talks dirty" for a living, a heavy handed gun loving Sheriff's Deputy and a young woman in a raccoon costume, not to mention Dickie the Dolphin has a helluva romp in his tank with a beautiful TV reporter and Orky the Wale, who kills the Voles doctor, which is subsequently set up like a suicide.
Sound like fun? It is, so I won't spoil it for you. Read the book!
Native Tongue was Hiassen's fourth solo novel and as with the others is set in his home state of Florida. While Hiaasen's wit is undeniable, there is an underlying agenda in his books. It is obvious that Mr. Hiassen is a conservationist and is not happy with the wanton rapid, seemingly unregulated development taking place in Florida.
Hiassen's writing is amazingly simple and straight forward.
Being an editorialist this is a man that knows how to write. His preposterous stories are so interesting that the pages just wiz by. His characters are also unbelievably interesting if not outright Wacky. For Instance the six foot five, ex-Governor Skink who Hiaasen seems to reprise in most of his novels is a beloved character, sort of like F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack. For those of you who are not familiar with Skink, it's a funny story. When he was governor his liberal conservationist programs were thwarted by the legislature at every turn. Rumor had it that he just flipped out. He did get so disgusted that he walked out of the Governorship and from time to time is spotted in the Everglades sporting a shower cap.
If you are in the mood for a light entertaining read I highly recommend Hiaasen, especially Native Tongue

7 people found this helpful

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Gotham Gal

Still great after 20 years!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 20, 2013

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I picked up Native Tongue for the first time in Europe. I was thirteen and I had already gone through the books that I had brought for the trip. An adult I was traveling with handled me this (along with an Anne Rice book) and I fell in love with the story of an ex reporter turned PR man. Coupled with the story of an ex-governor and a pair of bumbling thieves, Native Tongue is a great gateway into the world of Hiaasen.

Re-reading this book, I was reminded by the theme of preservation. Nature is King in Florida, and also in Hiaasen's world, and those who forget that, tend to get 'theirs' in hideous ways. And the reporter in me loves the old reporter talk from Joe Winder's days in the bullpen.

When the precious blue-tongued mango voles at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills on North Key Largo are stolen by heartless, ruthless thugs, Joe Winder wants to uncover why, and find the voles. Joe is lately a PR man for the Amazing Kingdom theme park, but now that the voles are gone, Winder is dragged along in their wake through a series of weird and lethal events that begin with the sleazy real-estate agent/villain Francis X. Kingsbury and can end only one way.

Who Should Read This Book: Fans of humor, dark humor and who want a bazaar, gonzo-type story mired in a little bit of truth.
Final Thoughts: This continues to be one of my favorite Carl Hiaasen books. While I mourn the death of the blue tongued vole as a species, I am happy that dolphins get to win in the end, though. I feel like wildlife wins at the end of each Hiaasen book, which is a good or a bad thing, depending on how you feel about wildlife in Florida. I read most of this on an airplane, listening to the audiobook while on a red eye flight (and seeing dinosaurs with lighted exoskeletons do construction work in some weird way--I blame exhaustion) and reading the ebook on my Kindle. I bought a copy of the paperback for my husband on a trip to Florida, but I have no idea where THAT copy is. Maybe I'll find it shortly.

6 people found this helpful

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gene underwood

Another great and crazy story.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 11, 2022

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Love all the zany characters
Carl hiassen is one if the best writers on the planet.
I al2ays want more!

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Donald Singer

Florida and Carl Hiaasen were meant for each other!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 8, 2022

Verified Purchase

Hiaasen has a way of telling stories about the greed and opportunistic nature of the people who have shaped Florida over the last century that, while both surreal and humorous, are remarkably on point in their description of the “Boom Town” mentality that is destroying “Paradise”!

3 people found this helpful

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janie Chambers

Typical Hiassen.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 14, 2022

Verified Purchase

It's a great book. Hiassen keeps you guessing. Love how he intertwined the.characters I've read.most all his books. One more to go. It's hard to beat Tourist Season ..A cardiologist from south Florida turned me.on to Haissen. I was living on Sanibel working as a nurse at lee memorial 1989.

2 people found this helpful

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Patto

The usual assortment of bizarre characters, including Skink

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book offers the usual wacky plot and cranky satire that makes Hiassen’s books fun to read. But Native Tongue was less satisfying for me than some other Hiaasen books (like Striptease, which I loved).

The heroes and heroines of the book are good people who degenerate into eco-terrorists. They pull off numerous major felonies, which are supposed to be amusing but I found distasteful after a while.

Yes there are unforgettable characters — lovable burglars, loathsome dirtbags with bizarre eccentricities, deranged idealists, etc. But tourists are the enemy in these books, and Hiaasen delights in portraying them as unattractively as possible. I don’t care for this, as I spent a week this past winter in St. Petersburg to get some relief from the brutal cold in Vermont. Call me a poor sport, but I’m just not amused when Skink shoots at rental cars carrying tourist families.

Maybe if the book had gone on less long, I would have liked it better.

7 people found this helpful

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WP

Just a shame about the poor female characters

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

My fourth Carl Hiaasen book, i knew what to expect. I knew in what ways i would enjoy it, and it what ways to brace myself for crap. Hiasaen did not buck his trend and my expectations were in no way disappointed with this book.

The pros: It’s silly and funny and made me laugh out loud. The whole premise (the ongoing attempts to sabotage a poor imitation Disneyland theme park and its owner’s plans to destroy a large section of Floridian wildlife in order to build a golf course) is ridiculous and only gets more slapstick as the book progresses, but the progression of the ridiculousness is so gradual, you barely notice it happening and don’t stop to question it.

The storytelling is actually very good. The small hints and subtle foreshadowing is perfection. A couple of times they caught me out completely, but often a small mention of something had me thinking, “I hope that’s…” and when it turned out it was, i could only grin with glee.

As expected, from previous Hiaasen books, his female characters are poor. The best he can do in this book is Molly McNamara, a rich old lady who campaigns tirelessly for the Florida wilderness. The reason Molly is Hiaasen’s best female character to date? Even Hiaasen finds it difficult to sexualise an elderly lady.

It is immensely frustrating. On the one hand, Hiaasen seems to point at and mock the over-sexualised image of women (with a grotesquely over-large photograph of a naked woman at the nineteenth hole of a golf course or the dumbing down of a historical show in order to “show more tits and ass”), but he himself does nothing to make his female characters anything but typical clichés of this; they serve little-to-no purpose except as sexual objects for the male characters.

As much as i enjoyed all aspects of the book except the blatant sexism, i will never be able to give Hiaasen more than three stars until he writes more realistic female characters.

One person found this helpful

Julian Younger

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 20, 2017

Verified Purchase

Ideal, very timely delivery

Dave McIlmoyl

Another South Florida Mystery

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 26, 2016

Verified Purchase

Carl Hiaasen is a great writer. Anyone who hates the vast Disney empire with a passion needs to be heard. He is a former newspaper reporter and has honed his writing style to a sarcastically hilarious wittiness. His characters run the gamut of south Florida sleaze. There is Joe Wilder, a down on his luck media flak for a Disney-like theme park, his girlfriend the phone sex operator and his boss, a witness protection ex Mafioso who is hiding after ratting out the New York mob. This is just a small taste of the list of characters. Of course Skink, a former Florida governor and State Highway Patrolman Jim Tile are involved too. The plot is non stop action with many escapades involving unscrupulous land developers and vanishing Florida wilderness. Carl Hiaasen is great and this book is an excellent read.

Peter

ok

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on July 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

every thing ok

R.D.

Skink Rides Again!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 25, 2020

Verified Purchase

Serious subjects treated with rollicking humour and knotty plots. Great fun!

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