"Nature Girl" by Carl Hiaasen

It's quite rare for me to read book after book by the same author (unless that author is Georgette Heyer - you may have noticed...) but in the last couple of months, I have become very fond of the writing of Carl Hiaasen. He has a real talent for the comedic and sarcastic style that so many authors wish they could pull off and he creates characters that are easy to relate to and care about.

In "Nature Girl" he introduces us to several of these, most notable of which are Honey Santana, a single mom living in a Florida trailer park with her son Fry, a clever and overly mature for his age teenager. In most homes, computers are protected so that children don't have access to specific websites but in this trailer, it's the other way round - Fry has put control on the computer to limit his mother's use of it because Honey is more than a little wacko and when she gets obsesses about something, she is apt to do something pretty stupid.
Which is just what happens when an unfeeling douche of a telesales guy calls Honey and Fry in the middle of dinner to sell them something they don't want, at a price they can't afford. The call spirals into a fight and Honey snaps and starts putting together a plan to get back at the sales guy.
So starts an adventures on Dismal Key in the Everglades which involves (in no particular order):

• A Seminole Indian bearing the name of Sammy Tigertail and weighed down by a heavy identity crisis. 
• A college girl gone wild. 
• A semi-famous mistress of a murderer with a body that drives men wild. 
• A hapless telesales guy who has lost his job and is about to lose his wife. 
• A divorced man named Perry Skinner whose ex-wife Honey is a real basket case (...). 
• A bunch of born-again christians. 
• A disgusting and deranged sexist fish monger. 

Chasing each other around the small island, they all have personalities that are to some extent outside of the normal and when they are mixed, a true mayhem of misunderstandings and calamities break lose making for a hilarious story about forgiveness and about how sometimes, the most best people are the ones we call crazy.

"The Hottest Dishes in the Tartar Cuisine" by Alina Bronsky

Sometimes a narrator will tell the story with real feeling, drawing you in and playing on your heartstrings. Giving you unlimited access to their thoughts and feelings and the way that they see the world. And some narrator's are just downright unreliable, giving you heir version of events and leaving it to you to figure out what really happened. Rosalinda, the main character of Alina Bronsky's "The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine" is one of those narrators. 

Rosalinda is, at least according to herself, a very capable woman. She is clever, intelligent, beautiful and with more energy and gusto than most. At least according to herself. In reality she is incredibly forceful and downright manipulative, stopping at nothing to get what she wants. When we first meet her, she is the mother of the 17-year-old disappointment Sulfia who is neither clever nor pretty and when it turns out that she is pregnant, Rosalinda does her very best to provoke an abortion. It doesn't happen which turns out to be for the best because her little grandchild Aminat becomes her most precious - I was almost about to write possession... 

In Rosalinda's view, noone can take care of Aminat like she can and she completely designs her life around Aminat and the many hopes that she has for her future. The book follows them for the next thirty years, as Rosalinda repeatedly marries off Sulfia to one hapless husband after the other and eventually succeeds to sell Aminat to a sleazy, cheap, disgusting German in return for him marrying Sulfia and bringing the three of them to Germany. It is a family tale like none you've ever read before and it's a fabulous story, fabulously well-written. 

I absolutely love the unreliableness of Bronsky's narrator. Everything she says is so tainted by her own interpretations that it is almost impossible to distinguish what actually goes on and her cunning ways and at times evil manipulation is depicted by herself as almost saintly behaviour. She never does anything for herself, everything is done for others. 

At the same time, the author manages to occasionally take a step back from her narrator and show us who she really is - but it is done with a sly, dry humour. Actually humour is what saves the storyline because if you look at it, it is an incredibly sad story. But it is told with such humour, compassion and attention to absurdness that it doesn't come across as sad. It almost becomes a testament to life despite trouble and difficulties, to survival even against the worst odds. 

It is a fantastic book  - I'm pretty sure that it'll make it unto the Best Books of 2013 list in a year's time. It's dramatic, sad, poignantly beautiful and told with skill, intelligence and humour!

"Skios" by Michael Frayn

Looking for the perfect read for a holiday or a relaxing Sunday? One that will make you laugh with intelligent twists? Look no further than "Skios" by Michael Frayn... 

Skios a is a little paradise on earth, a warm, sunny Greek island in the middle of a glittering, blue sea, is the setting for an annual event where glamour meets science, the Fred Toppler Foundation's annual House Party. Nikki Hook, PA to Mrs. Fred Toppler, the dancer formerly known as Bahama LeStarr, is in charge of making the House Party a roaring success and she is damned if anything is going to spoil this opportunity to secure a promotion. Lightly tanned with discreetly blonde highlights, she is the embodiment of efficiency, when she's waiting in the airport to pick up the guest of honour Dr. Wilfred Norman. Unfortunately, the good-looking, charming man introducing himself as Dr. Wilfred Norman is not actually the distinguished doctor but instead professional charmer and chancher per excellence, Oliver Fox.

Oliver Fox is a ladies man with a penchant for making up identities. In certain London circles (among socialites and hedge fund wives), he is notorious. He party trick seems to revolve around picking up needy women and then sponging off them for as long as possible. This particular weekend, he has come to Skios for a hot weekend with a woman whose rich financier fiancee is away on a weekend trip but when he spots the dishy Nikki in the airport, he suddenly decides to try out the identity as Dr. Wilfred Norman.

Enough to say that hilarity ensues with Oliver Fox playing the important academic dignitary and explaining away to fellow scientists as only a true conman can and Dr. Norman enjoying the dubious honour of being trapped in a secluded villa with a beautiful woman who seems to think that he is a rapist.

"Skios" by Michael Frayn was longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize and for a reason. It combines hilarious with elegantly written in a way that very few authors can while creating characters that engage  the reader and come to life. Many authors who master the comedic genre rely largely on the plot to carry them but in "Skios", the characters are what drive the story and bring forward the laughs. This is holiday reading for the intelligent reader who wants a little more and I can recommend it as the  most perfect entertainment for an afternoon on the beach or in the garden. 

"Skinny Dip" by Carl Hiaasen

Chaz Perrone is a douchebag, this is clear from the first page of Carl Hiaasen's "Skinny Dip" where aforementioned Mr. Perrone's wife is taking a headfirst, involuntary dive from a cruiseship into the ocean. Having somehow gotten in the way of her husband's plan, Joey Perrone finds herself thrown overboard in a pretty callous attempt at her life and as she hits the waves, she's not sure how she will manage to survive for long enough to swim ashore. With the help of fury, swim training and a bale of pot from Jamaica, she clings to life and finds herself being rescued by illegal drugs and a gruff lonesome ex-cop living a life of solitude on a small island off the Florida coast.

Although furious with Chaz for his deceit, Joey is in no way ready to go to the police, instead she wants to take revenge. No turning the cheek for this scorned woman who enrolls her rescuer, Mick, to help her get back at Chaz. She's not out to kill him, just drive him crazy enough to get him to admit exactly why he wanted her dead. 

"Skinny Dip" is a hilarious story of an avenging angel (Joey) who armed with a gold AmEx, Italian shoes and with a somewhat reluctant but very competent companion in tow (Mick) sets out to destroy the life of her hopeless husband. 

This is my second Hiaasen novel and it was even funnier than my first ("Star Island", reviewed earlier this month) and the strength is in the characters: 

Joey is the American dream, the girl next door. She has inherited a vast fortune but has earmarked it for charity and her only extravagance is a bit of clothes and Italian shoes. She's a clever, capable, big hearted and a little naive blonde who is hard not to love. Somehow she reminded me of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse - one of those girls that you would love to hang out with. 

Mick is a real man and a real loner. Not in touch with his feelings in any way whatsoever, he has several failed marriages behind him and prefers the company of his dog. 

Chaz is ... indescribably annoying. A biologist with no respect for nature at all, he will happily sell his soul, his wife and his dignity for money. He is an inexcusable playboy who is guided by his genitals in all matters where he is not guided by money. Yes, there is very little to recommend him apart from his good looks and he his the perfect (if somewhat dumb) villain. 

It is these three characters, along with a range of minor characters, that makes "Skinny Dip" work. That and the many plot twists and these characters will have you laughing out loud and maybe read half the night (like I did) because it simply is a hoot. 

How Can You Not Love a Book...

...that begins like this:

At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic. 
I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves. 

"Skinny Dip" by Carl Hiaasen, page 15

Show me your books and I will tell you, who you are...

One of my favourite book bloggers, Simon at http://www.stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.com/ - has posted this really fun survey today. Basically it challenges you to describe yourself using titles of books that you have read in 2010.

Hope you will join in the fun and copy/paste the survey and do it yourself as well - send me to link to your survey in a comment and I will come by your blog :-)

Describe yourself: The Exception (by Christian Jungersen)

How do you feel: A Certain Age (by Rebecca Ray)

Describe where you currently live: Neverwhere (by Neil Gaiman)

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Rainbow Valley (by L.M. Montgomery)

Your best friend is: Lady Oracle (by Margaret Atwood)

You and your friends are: The Edwardians (by Vita Sackville-West)

What's the weather like: Twilight (by Stephenie Meyer)

You fear: Decline and Fall (by Evelyn Waugh)

What is the best advice you have to give: Let the Right One In (by John Ajvide Lindqvist)

Thought for the day: All in the Mind (by Alastair Campbell)

My soul's present condition: Strangeland (by Tracey Emin)