Native Tongue

To say that [Native Tongue] is a typical Carl Hiaasen is to mislead, in that "typical" is too often a pejorative. With Hiaasen, "typical" is laugh-out-loud, head shaking, raucous, outright fun. His plots and the characters that animate them are over the top...and yet very close to truth and reality.

In [Native Tongue], what powers the action is a theme park in the Florida Keys, a cheesy low-rent DisneyWorld. The impresario of the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills is Francis X. Kingsbury, a man made wealthy through condo and resort development on environmentally sensitive land that crowds out wildlife, including endangered species, and pollutes coastal waters. Corruption at all levels of government, of course, enable Kingsburg's projects. What show more no one knows is that Kingsbury, formerly of New York City, is a beneficiary of the Federal Witness Protection Program, under the auspices of which he was whisked from a federal courtroom, in which he testified against fellow mobsters, to Florida. The mobsters betrayed want him dead (once they find him) but an awful lot of Floridians do too.

Molly McNamara is one such, and she isn't reluctant to take a low road to her goal. The book begins with two low-life numbskulls, driving away from the Kingdom and pitching two ratlike critters out of their pickup's windows. It turns out that Molly hired the pair, Danny Pogue and Bud Schwartz, to steal the two blue-tongued mango voles—the last two of the species, saved from extinction by Mr. Kingsbury's minions. They were supposed to be delivered to Molly. She's not happy when they arrive at her condo without the voles.

"…[T]ell me what happened."
  Before Bud Schwartz could stop him, Danny Pogue said, "There were holes in the box. That's how they got out."
  Molly McNamara's right hand slipped beneath her bathrobe and came out holding a small black pistol. Without saying a word she shot Danny Pogue twice in the left foot…
  "You boys are lying," Molly said.

Mere gunshot wounds can't break up this trio. Molly, Danny, and Brad amble in and out of the storyline right up to the end.

Joe Winder is another. After getting fired from his last newspaper job for being just a little bit opinionated in his reporting, Joe takes a PR job at—most naturally—Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. Joe's self-assigned mission is to bring the kingdom down, by hook or crook. The menace he must dodge is Pedro Luz, the kingdom's security chief, a muscleman so enamoured of steroids that he drags an I.V. stand around with him so he can suck his preferred mix from an I.V. bag.

There's more, but I'll leave it for you to encounter as the story progresses. Hiaasen generates my preferred sort of comfort reading. This 'in gets two thumbs up from me. show less

Blue-tongued mango voles. If you've read the book, you've now collapsed on the floor howling in remembered glee. If you haven't read the book before, well, it's time now.

Mix Hiaasen's trademark hapless idiot criminals, burnt-out losers, small-minded grifters, and slimy real estate developers, add a cut-rate theme park, shake with a dose of environmentalist headline-grabbing, and *poof* you have the kind of book that makes summer beach reading so much fun.

What can I add that will make a difference? Book's been out 20 years and there's already a gabloozel and six reviews, so pick it up! Really, there is so much fun to be had in Hiaasenland it's a shame to miss out. He writes very well-built sentences, he creates recognizable characters, show more and he has a flensing knife of an eye for human nature. If you haven't, please do; if you have, but weren't amused, please try this one; if you have and rolled around laughing, well, we're soul mates. Will you marry me? show less

I've read several books by Carl Hiaasen, including several of the Skink series. Skink is an interesting character, although he doesn't play a major role in this one. That role is probably filled mostly by a reporter named Joe Winder along with several supporting players including a senior citizen who is good at playing a batty old woman, but is actually pretty sharp, and good with a gun.

Aside from Skink, there is another fun recurring character who follows him from place to place, a big, black State Trooper named Jim Tile who gets reassigned whenever Skink moves. Jim Tile is a pretty cool character. He meets up with a lot of racists who seem to want to provoke him with racial epithets, but Jim is good at outwardly ignoring them until he show more doesn't. At other times, he seems to love intimidating them, doing things like eating in places that don't welcome non-whites, and taking his time at it.

The real main character is Florida and its environmental rape by land developers and crooked politicians. Skink was previously an honest governor of Florida, but finally gave up and walked away, disappearing until given up for dead by most people. Jim Tile had worked with him and helped him disappear. show less

Hiaasen's books are such a treat (dated perhaps, but still enjoyable). He can write about political corruption in such a way that I don't feel completely helpless after reading his books. Also, and very strangely, I always want to visit south Florida immediately after reading his books. And I don't think that's his point :-)

When a story opens with a rat being thrown from one car into another one that just happens to be passing, you know that you’re in for an odd story. Of course, this being Carl Hiaasen’s story, it’s not even as simple as that. The ‘rat’ is in fact a blue-tongued mango vole, one of only two remaining in the world – which is why it’s a bit of a shame that a state trooper shoots it. Having not quite grasped the seriousness of their mission to steal the creatures, Bud Schwartz and Danny Pogue have soon dispensed of the last remaining vole in a similar manner and have to return to the commissioner of their crime with an empty box. Fortunately, she knows they are telling the truth about completing the job, because the theft is all show more over the news. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop 70 year old Molly McNamara from shooting Danny Pogue in the foot as a punishment for lying. She doesn’t like liars or bad language, as the hapless burglars quickly learn.

This is just the beginning of a lengthy adventure (500 pages) during which a medley of generally unsavoury characters scheme, shoot and threaten each other in their often ingenious attempts to achieve their aims. The dispute is bigger than one newly extinct species: Francis X Kingsbury, a thoroughly rotten human being with an unusual past, intends to build a golf complex on a valuable preservation area next door to his theme park, the Amazing Kingdom. Not content with using the Kingdom to compete (badly) with Disney, Kingsbury wants to pave over the ecologically diverse area in order to make a killing in real estate. Frustratingly, the usual bribes and diversions that make such lucrative business possible are hitting a small obstacle in the shape of ‘Mothers of Wilderness’, a local environmental group whose elderly leader is branching out into environmental terrorism. However, Kingsbury has his pet goon, Pedro, to do the really dirty work…

While this is happening, a myriad of other characters live out their odd destinies. Nina is beginning her career as a writer – on a sex phone line. Her boyfriend, Joe, is trying to pursue a stable career as a publicist for the Amazing Kingdom, despite his antipathy towards idiots. Bud and Danny look forward to developing their criminal careers in a new direction, while an FBI agent finds his objectives derailed in a surprising manner. Fish and Game are on the hunt for a panther that seems to be capable of moving vast distances. Pedro discovers the joys of IV tubes. A grumpy dolphin attempts to get his rocks off. And there seems to be a rather odd fellow living in the words.

My thoughts

In this story Hiaasen once again develops the key ideas and themes of his previous novels: he satirises big business’ cavalier disregard for the environment, the gullibility of tourists, and the corruption of politics. It will surprise few who’ve read him to know that he also works as a journalist in his native Florida, where his books are set, exposing the same kind of schemes that he vicariously destroys in ‘Native Tongue’. It is clear that he intends his books to create a certain resonance with his readers, despite the comic overload.

Although all the characters are odd in some way, it is the characters seeking to exploit the land that are truly grotesque. By the time Pedro chewed off his own foot I no longer believed in him as a possible human being. He was a frightening lump of drug induced violence, incapable of achieving the simple extermination of his enemy. Similarly, although Kingsbury initially seems little more than a bully who is incapable of creating a coherent sentence, he becomes increasingly repulsive until he is almost a caricature of a caricature. The gradual disintegration of the characters allows Hiaasen to ratchet up the sheer gruesomeness of the action until it creates physical responses like wincing, but the slapstick nature of events means that the reader is comfortably distanced from feeling actual concern.

The character’s destinies are closely intertwined as they all begin to act in increasingly desperate and often deranged ways. In this sense, the novel is well held together. Despite frequent switches between characters, the third person narration and closely related action meant that I never felt anything was irrelevant or distracting me from the ‘main story’. In fact, the quick pace meant that I would devour great chunks of the book in one sitting. I also appreciated the way that Hiaasen never relies upon cliff-hangers the way some lesser writers do. There are no abrupt switches where one character is left hanging on to the edge of a cliff, or another character abandoned mid startled scream. The action unfolds naturally and I always knew where it was going, which meant that I was intrigued without being frustrated.

That doesn’t mean that I was never surprised by some details, but Hiaasen tends to use irony to get a lot of his points across, and that’s reliant upon having the reader ‘on-side’ rather than trailing a few steps behind. This leads to some lovely touches of humour that made me smile, if not always actually chuckle.

The chapters are not overly long, typically about ten pages, and these are usually divided further by sections focusing on different characters. This made it easy to pause when I really needed to – like to get some sleep! The writing style is fluent and often rendered gently comic through the choice of language. For example, a photograph of an animal’s mouth is described as allowing a ‘splendid’ view of the creature’s ‘tiny indigo tongue’. I found the book enjoyable to read without being too simplistically written. The tone and mood of the novel was consistently humorous, rather than having concentrated bursts of humour, even when the subject matter was somewhat darker.

Readers who like to have everything tied up neatly should appreciate the conclusion of the book. After a suitably definitive conclusion, Hiaasen devotes a brief chapter to tidying up loose odds and ends by including a paragraph or two on each of the characters’ and their fates. Among other tantalising titbits, we learn how Nina’s phone-sex career progressed and what happened to the break-dancing dwarves. I really liked this feature as I am someone who appreciates firm conclusions rather than open ended possibilities.

One minor detail that nagged at me was the use of characters’ full names. Throughout the whole novel, Hiaasen frequently refers to characters by their full names, i.e. most times they speak, several times per page. I am not at all sure what this was intended to achieve, unless it was to help establish a certain amount of distance between the characters and Hiaasen’s warnings about the environment. On the whole, I just felt it was a tad irritating, and I still think of the characters as ‘Danny Pogue’ and ‘Molly McNamara’, for instance, which is an unnecessarily lengthy way of thinking! Yes, it’s a miniscule point, so I’ll press on to some potentially more useful information.

I feel it’s important to include a couple of warnings at this juncture. The characters often speak in a vulgar way, (it’s quite revealing that Kingsbury named his main attraction ‘The Wet Willie’,) so there is bad language, although it is used in keeping by specific characters rather than being scattered liberally through the text. Another point to be aware of is that the action is occasionally obscene, although there is no graphic violence or sexual activity; it is slapstick, not stomach-churning. In fact, the more violent the action becomes, the less believable it is. At one point, Pedro beats Joe with his crutch. Hiaasen doesn’t feel the need to drag out the violence either: it is reported and the action moves inexorably onwards. These two injunctions to mean that the novel is more suitable for adult readers, but then, that’s probably clear from the mention of sex phone lines earlier!

It’s probably also worth being aware that Carl Hiaasen’s books are fairly similar in terms of style and subject matter, so if you like/don’t like this one, you’re likely to have a similar reaction to the series as a whole. Even if you love it, you might want to take a moment to consider before reading three in a row.

Conclusions

Whilst most of the action in this novel is entirely plausible and actually of a very serious nature (murder, vandalism, destruction) the way Hiaasen tells the tale emphasises the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Towards the end of the novel one character states that he realises he won’t have achieved very much; he simply wants to save this one corner of his island from one development. He knows that the ongoing war will not be a case of winning or losing but rather a relentless destruction of nature for ‘business’ reasons. It is a credit to Hiaasen’s skill that, despite his character's acceptance of the inevitable, this is never a maudlin work. The sense of comic frothiness continues right until the end, and it’s only when you put the book down that you might wonder where in your local area vital ecosystems and habitats are being destroyed to make some rich blokes richer. show less

Typical Hiaasen. Crazy characters and outlandish plots. Very creative (if violent) ways of offing the bad guys. Skink makes a return appearance, along with Officer Tile. His books are just fun to read. Total escapism.

The sad news is that I only have two more Hiaasen's that I haven't read. I sure hope he's busy with the next one. Native Tongue has all the black humor of the rest of his books and maybe a little more. I heard the other day that Hiaasen says his characters and situations are built from true life. I sure hope my life never meets his except in his books! Native Tongue centers on a Disney World wannabe - it's destruction of Florida's natural resources and the punishment for same. It's GREAT. (reviewed in 1996)