Book Review: Nature Girl

I love Carl Hiaasen. Okay well I've never met the man but I love his writing. There is something about the ability to take a dozen or so oddball characters and weave them together into a hilarious story. When I first read John Irving I thought that he was the best at combining characters but Hiaasen takes it to a higher place. This book is filled with no less than a dozen characters who are all fascinating in their own right. And he manages to bring them all together on one small island to see what will happen.

Nature Girl follows Honey Santana, a single mom in the Everglades who is off her meds. She hears mismatched songs in her head constantly and reacts often violently when things displease. Well she is displeased when a telemarketer calls one evening and then calls her a name. So she sets about to track him down. Now the telemarketer is having an interesting week as it is. His mistress is about to dump him for being too boring, his rich wife is planning to divorce him, and a private investigater is tailing him. So when he gets a fake call from Honey offering him an ecotour in Florida he jumps at the chance. So the telemarketer, his mistress, and the private investigator all head down to Florida.

There they meet a Seminole Indian who is haunted by a tourist he didn't kill, a college girl who is bored with life and is just looking for something fun, a fish vendor who is stalking Honey, and Honey's ex-husband and son. And that's just the beginning. Imagine all of these on a small island to get an idea of the almost slapstick quality of this novel. He sets things up beautifully. There are so many kidnappings in this book it is hard to keep track of whose prisoner is whose. Each character is played up to the max. Boyd, the telemarketer, is just scum in the worst sense of the word. Honey is crazy but still very likable. Sammy, the Seminole Indian, just wants to be alone and can't seem to catch a break. Even Boyd's soon to be ex-wife is just a little crazy.

Hiaasen writes all of his books about Florida and particularly about wild Florida. When I was on vacation a couple weeks ago I read his The Downhill Lie, about golf. I'm always impressed with the subtle environmental message that he hides in his books. The bad guys hate the outdoors, the good guys revel in it. The swamp always wins. And these are hidden in the book. Anyone who reads his work will come away thinking about how hilarious a writer he is. They may not even notice any sort of message. The plot on this books is wild but somehow the reader is willing to follow. The characters are just too interesting to turn away. In the tradition of the best train wreck, we just have to keep looking.

This book was a perfect antidote for me. It has been weeks since I've done any real reading so this was a quick read filled with enjoyable characters. I devoured it in little over 24 hours. The perfect beach book, I could also see spending a cold snowy day curled up on the couch with this book. Just be careful who's in the room. I guarantee you will laugh, probably out loud, possibly shooting food out your nose. Yeah he's that funny.