Naked Came the Manatee

Like the waters of Key Biscayne, in and near where much of the plot of this book occurs, this story is choppy. That's to be expected, given the novel consists of 13 chapters, no two written by the same author. Dave Barry kicks off the story, Carl Hiaasen finishes it, and the writers in between are all seasoned Floridian authors of varying renown. Some of the chapters are funnier than others, some better written, and a couple don't work at all. The approach makes for disjointed storytelling at best, and reads more like a series of tenuously interconnected vignettes than an actual story. It's an interesting writing experiment, but one that's been done before and better. If you're a fan of any of these authors or the peculiar inanities of show more south Florida life, you'll enjoy this book. show less

An interesting experiment. As usual, Carl Hiaasen was the best. Not a great read, but light summer stuff. I particularly liked Hiaasen's dehumanizing and desentimentalizing the manatee. It was as though he was saying to the other authors, "Enough of this nonsense! A manatee is an eating and f-cking machine with the mental resources of a piece of celery. He could care less about human foibles and so could I ..."

The unusual name, cover and the fact that this was on the New York Times Bestseller list attracted me to this book. This is meant to be a comedy written by 13 of Florida’s ‘finest writers’ but I just did not find it funny. As each chapter was written by a different author, they did not always flow smoothly into each other. The characters seemed false with the most interesting character being the manatee! I got half way through the book and had to give up. I have too much life to live to waste it on a boring book!

Remember that game where you get a bunch of people together and one person starts a story then breaks off and the next person continues the story, and so on? Well this book is what happens when that bunch of people are all published authors. Just like those impromptu group stories, this story is a lot of fun, but suffers from characters that suddenly begin acting out of character, plot points that show up suddenly then just drift away, and even chapters that shift genres. Kudos to Carl Hiaasen who had the unenviable job of trying to tie down a story that had grown way out of hand and provide a reasonable conclusion to it.

The structure of "Naked came the Manatee" reminds me of a game we played in primary school; Person A writes something, passes it onto Person B, who adds to Person A's story, etc., so it ends up like Chinese Whispers. The end result of "Naked came the manatee" is somewhat better written than what my fellow students and I came up with but reading it made me nostalgic for books with a single author.

It was disjointed but it was also not overly interesting and it was only a testament to my staying power that I finished the book. Still, others with more nostalgic memories of their primary school class writing projects may enjoy it more.

Fun book, interesting way to get a bunch of authors to write one book together. But at the same time...you get a bunch of authors to write one book and a couple of your authors are buttheads. I love Carl Haiasson and Dave Barry, but there are a couple of authors in the book who's chapters took a complete 180 away from main story.

Luckily for us Carl Haiasson ends the book and so he's able to take all the loose ends and weave them into a final ending that does the book justice.

Another good read. Gritty and silly, a good book for the summer.

A great premise, but this book really foundered along the way. Each author tried to make it harder for the next one to continue the story, while planting what they thought were land mines along the way. It made for a jumbled mess, for me, and I didn't think it was very funny, either. Some of the authors were quite boring, and I read too many authors to mention.
It would have worked if Carl Hiaasen took the whole thing and wrote it himself. Yes, I am a HUGE fan of his writing. But this would have been more to my liking. I agree with others that there were too many heads, as well. And, I think even Hiaasen was annoyed and rolled his eyes at least a little, on how the others made the manatee so human-like..

A great novel to get a feel for show more other writers you've never read before. show less