Product Description

Honey Santana - self-proclaimed queen of lost causes - has a Plan. She may be a single mother living in a trailer-park with her teenage son; she may have just been sacked from her day job for whacking an over-friendly co-worker in the balls with a crab mallet; she may be an obsessive compulsive with an anger management problem. But, she's determined to set up her own eco-tour business, paddling tourists around the Florida Everglades in ocean kayaks. She's also working on a scheme to help rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference and dinner-time telemarketers. The result is a kayaking trip from hell involving an unplanned overnight stay on Dismal Key - one of the Everglades' Ten Thousand Islands - for Honey, her kayaks, and her two 'guests': a part-time telephonist who's recently foul-mouthed her, and his less than enthusiastic mistress. What Honey doesn't know is that, lurking in the island's undergrowth, are two men with death on their minds: Sammy Tigertail, a half-blood Seminole Indian and failed alligator wrestler; and Honey's deranged co-worker, Louis Piejack, now with most of his fingers surgically mis-attached to the wrong knuckles, and intent on revenge. A holiday to die for? In Hiaasen's chaotic universe, anything can happen ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #286844 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Observer
'Carl Hiaasen's latest screwball thriller ... is sometimes ludicrous but
always engaging and frequently hilarious.'

Independent
`Nature Girl, the product of a deranged imagination, combines the comedic
energy of Molière with Mark Twain's lightness of phrase.'

Observer
Carl Hiaasen's latest screwball thriller ... is sometimes
ludicrous but always engaging and frequently hilarious.

Customer Reviews

Clever & Amusing
If you're already a fan of Carl Hiassen's patented brand of Florida set light weight crime fiction Nature Girl will statisfy if not overwhelm you. If you're new to the author's work then this a reasonable place to start, even if he has written better books (his last, Skinny Dip for example). On the offchance that you've tried his work before and not found it to your taste then firstly, why are you reading this review and secondly, walk away because I doubt there's anything here that will change your opinion.

The usual mix of oddball and disfunctional characters, complex, coincidental plotting that works with swiss watch-like precision, gentle humour, mild satire and real heart, Nature Girl is light weight, agreeable stuff. Its not going to change anyone's world and you get the feeling that Hiassen can churn this stuff out in his sleep, but it remains a decent, likeable and amusing way to pass the time.

Aww, no Skink !
In 'Nature Girl', Carl Hiaasen has come up with the goods yet again.
Sticking with the formula that has worked in his other books, he takes a wildly diverse, screw-ball cast of characters and sets them on a collision course in Florida's 10,000 Islands.
The several story lines are woven together beautifully to lead to the climax on Dismal Key.
While not as good as Double Whammy and Tourist Season, it's on a par with the rest of his work.
For the Hiaasen fans, I'm afraid there's no Skink and Jim or Al Garcia - maybe next time.

Another hilarious tale of American odd-balls, criminals and assorted weirdos
The lastest in Carl Haasen's hilarious car-crash novels (no, they are not about car-crashes, but reading them is like watching one). Nature Girl of the title, is Honey Santana, a single parent, living in a trailer in Flordia. One evening, while eating dinner, she receives a cold-call from Boyd Shreave, a salesman who trys to persuade her to purchase some real-estate in Florida. At first Honey tries to show Boyd how being a professional pest is no way to long-term fulfilment, but when Boyd gives her an earful of verbal abuse, Honey decides to plot revenge.

I won't go into the resulting plot as it would spoil it for you, but needless to say, in involves the usual cast of odd-ball characters and hilarious set-ups, many of which end up with scenes of extreme pain, death-defying accidents, or sexual humiliation. As I read this book, I couldn't help but think of British writer Tom Wolfe who's novels follow much the same sort of course. Great entertainment and easy to read.