Reading an established author for the first time is always a bit of a challenge for me. On the one hand, if an author has had enough success to publish several titles in today’s competitive climate, then there must be something noteworthy about his or her work. On the other hand, my literary tastes are so narrow that I rarely end up liking any new authors that I read. Nevertheless, I always approach a new writer with an open mind with the hopes of finding a new favorite.
I actually had high hopes when sitting down with Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen because it was on a Best Novels of 2006 list that I came across on a website. Before reading the book, I checked up on Hiaasen a bit, and found that most fans react positively to his work and that he is noted for creating quirky characters that get themselves into hilarious situations. That sounded fun, so if Nature Girl was written along those lines, I’d be in for a treat. Unfortunately, the book was just completely outlandish, with very little humor involved.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The first quarter of Nature Girl introduces the reader to all the main players in the story. They are: Honey Santana, a single-mom who is not exactly crazy, but not the most mentally stable person out there; Fry, Honey’s 12-year-old son; Skinner, Honey’s ex-husband who still loves her; Louis Piejack, Honey’s former boss who sexually harassed her at work; Boyd Shreave, a Texas-based telemarketer who curses at Honey one night during a sales call; Eugenie Fonda, Boyd’s mistress and former colleague at the telemarketing company; Theodore Dealey, a private eye hired by Boyd’s wife to collect evidence of infidelity; Sammy Tigertail, a half-Seminole forced to run away from his reservation after dumping the body of a tourist who died of a heart attack on his boat; and Gillian LaCroix, an FSU co-ed who falls for Sammy and insists that he take her as his hostage.
Once the characters are introduced, the author concocts a harebrained plot that brings them all together on a desolate Florida island known as Dismal Key. After they’re on the island, their various personal dramas play out in the most absurd way possible — and they’re far too convoluted and ridiculous to explain in detail here.
After the adventure on Dismal Key, everybody’s life changes — for the better for the “good guys” and for the worse for the “bad guys”.
My Reaction: Nature Girl was one of the worst books I’ve read in a long time. Wow, I simply cannot believe that this made it onto anyone’s “Best of” list, as it was boring from beginning to end, with a huge helping of stupid along the way. The only character whose actions were remotely believable was Fry, the 12-year-old — which isn’t saying much for the book. Seriously, I would rather read Walden again than go near another Carl Hiaasen novel!
First of all, the whole Honey Santana plot was so ridiculous that I almost dumped the book as soon as she sent airplane tickets to Boyd and Eugenie. Ok, I get that she was upset about some random telemarketer going off on her in the middle of dinner, and I can even buy that she would investigate the guy, try to get his real name, and Google him. But to send him airplane tickets so she could kayak him to the middle of nowhere and give him a lecture on decency??? That was just so far out there and so unrealistic that I couldn’t believe the idea got past an editor and into print. Sorry, but simply telling readers that Honey is not like most other people isn’t enough to make her actions seem plausible. This was just sooo dumb!
The second most ridiculous thing about this book was the Louis Piejack character. Hiaasen made the guy sound like a freakin’ zombie or something, what with all these oozing wounds, wrongly attached fingers, lurching gait, and so forth. And just like a zombie, Piejack kept coming and coming no matter what the other characters did to try to stop him. There’s no WAY that he would have been strong enough to past Skinner, even with that sawed-off shotgun that he could barely lift by the end there.
The rest of the characters and situations were way over the top like this as well. At first, I thought the book might be a farce or something, so I tried to read it in a lighthearted way. But it just wasn’t funny enough to work that way either. It was bad all the way around.
Overall, I recommend avoiding Nature Girl at all costs. This was a complete waste of time, and I honestly can’t see any reason to subject yourself to this!
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