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Native Tongue
Native Tongue
Native Tongue
Audiobook15 hours

Native Tongue

Written by Carl Hiaasen

Narrated by George Wilson

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

Ex-reporter Joe Winder had been working in the public relations department of a sleazy family entertainment park, The Amazing Kingdom of Thrills, when he chanced upon a news-breaking story inspired by the disappearance of two blue-tongued voles and the bizarre death of Orky, the killer whale.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 13, 2008
ISBN9781436142168
Native Tongue
Author

Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen (b. 1953) is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of more than twenty adult and young adult novels and nonfiction titles, including the novels Strip Tease (1993) and Skinny Dip (2004), as well as the mystery-thrillers Powder Burn (1981), Trap Line (1982), and A Death in China (1984), which were cowritten with fellow Miami Herald journalist Bill Montalbano (1941–1998). Hiaasen is best known for his satirical writing and dark humor, much of which is directed at various social and political issues in his home state of Florida. He is an award-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, and lives in Vero Beach.

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Reviews for Native Tongue

Rating: 3.712092203454895 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

521 ratings20 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An entertaining if odd environmentally-aware crime comedy. I like the style, and I enjoyed the book, but it also felt a bit like environmentalist propaganda. I've got more Hiaasen books on my shelf to read, and I'm definitely going to read more of his stuff, but I wonder now if everything he's written is focused on environmentalism.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another great book by Hiaasen! His plots are complex and delightfully convaluted which is amplified by his assemblage of whacky and idiosyntric characters. While Skink and his compatriot Jim Tile are the characters that tie these stories together, they are really the supporting cast to an array of characters that are offbeat and at first glance, not realistic. But the more he develops them, the more realistic they turn out to be. And I think that with Hiaasen, as with most good writers, the characters are his real strength, building the plot and providing the famework on which it twists and turns. And for me, personally, I love that Skink is an enviromental activist and even militant in his pursuit of its protection. Another most worthwhile entry in the Skink catalogue.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very reader needs one author who they can have in their book pile who provides a laugh or a lighthearted read when necessary. Carl Hiassen has become that author for me. I do not discriminate – I have read both his novels for adults and those for young adults. Both are great for adults and young readers and provide some levity in these strange and troubled times.A pair of rare blue tongued voles have disappeared from a Florida Keys wild animal/amusement park run by a disreputable, shady owner. A group of local blue haired eco-conservationists are on the warpath and want justice for the missing voles.Joe Winder, formerly a serious investigative journalist, now hating his job as public relations maven at said park, is fed up with the park, his bosses and the very light public relations releases he is forced to write. Additionally, Joe happens to love the local environment and does not want it further eradicated for golf courses.Into the mix drop two inept burglars and a character I have written about in previous blogs, Skink. Skink is a former Florida governor who became disgusted with big business, development and the destruction of the environment and has become a renegade who lives off the grid and becomes part of many adventures.As it turns out, the man who owns the wildlife park is in the Witness Protection Program and has decided to buy up what he considers swamplands in order to develop golf courses to make more money. The problem with Francis X. Kingsbury is that he never quite left his mob lifestyle behind and now he has all kinds of people on is tail looking to get even.This is a fast paced story with many laughs. At no time do you feel a lag in the story. One of the strengths of Hiassen as an author is his ability to create wonderfully colorful characters and to keep the story rolling. So grab this one and take a reading vacation in the Florida Keys with swamp dwellers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.75 starsTwo endangered voles (a specific type) – in fact the last ones on Earth! – are stolen from Animal Kingdom, a theme park/zoo in the Florida Keys. Characters in the book include the two bandits and an old woman (an activist who has a penchant for guns!), who get to know each other; the owner of the zoo, who has a questionable past, and some of his employees: one of the main ones being a PR script writer, who decides he doesn’t like all the lies he is asked to write to release to the media. Then… people start dying...Hiaasen’s books always have so much going on, and plenty of zany characters! I quite enjoyed this one, possibly more than some of the others I’ve read, but not quite enough for a 4 star rating. I liked that Hiaasen brought back a character from a previous novel, though I can’t recall which novel, but I do vaguely remember him. I don’t think I found this as funny as some of his others, but that’s ok. I always like the environmental themes in his books.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Pretty entertaining. A bit wackier than the Travis McGee books, but solidly in the same category on Floridian environmentalism.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not as compelling as some of his other books but still memorable characters and fantastic situations. Hiaasen is such a talented raconteur -- you never know quite what to expect.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    When a couple of endangered voles are stolen, a disgruntled PR guy at a cut-rate Disneyland-wannabe discovers a sinister secret. Meanwhile, you have an ex-politician hobo, a gun-toting octogenarian ecoterrorist, a couple of bumbling thieves, a phone sex worker turned serious poet, and the mafia, all getting in each other's ways. This book tries to be light-hearted and silly, and indeed most of the characters are pretty ridiculous, but it rubbed me the wrong way all the same. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of humor, but it didn't hide the sometimes obnoxious preaching. This is only my second Hiaasen book, but the story is very similar: well-meaning environmentalists versus corrupt developers. The thing is, most developers are completely legit. It's like, we're against all this development and destruction of native lands, and oh hey, they just happen to be doing something illegal. How convenient. How contrived.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's been a while since I read this book, but I remember finding the humor a little forced and a little too Dave Barryish. And I don't mean that in a good way.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Hiaasen is reading comfort food--predictable plots and quirky characters with a dash of the absurd. The three I've read are all very similar, but I like the way he handles his female characters--usually strong, smart and sexy, but not dependent on a man.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I don't know why this ended up in my reading list - musta been on sale or something. It's not a bad story - it has some good parts, but there's a lot of "satire" in it that just missed the mark. And too much "aren't I funny" from the author. He isn't that funny. The story isn't that "biting" or insightful and there's WAY too much time spent harping on about environmental destruction... I got the point by the halfway mark...But... it's fast enough reading. Trimming out 50-75 pages would've saved me a lot of skimming over Joe's porn girlfriend (still don't know what the point of her was), Skink's stupid panther shenanigans, and the steroid-head's over-the-topness. I don't think I'll read any more of this author's stuff though... it just isn't as funny as he thinks he is.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fun account of the downfall of an amusement park. With connections with the NY mob, small time burglars, environmentalists, phone porn performers. And the doings of Skink (hobo, etc.) and his small support network.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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, 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?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved this book, shows how you can get serious point across using comedy and taking the mickey out of situations.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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 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 thoughtsIn 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.ConclusionsWhilst 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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is my first taste of Carl Hiaasen and I like him. He keeps you going, and of course uses Florida as a background for his prose. Those of us near and native know where he's talking about and we can then join the bizarre characters in the story.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    The mystery part was good and funny
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Francis X. Kingsbury is one of the sleaziest multi-millionaires in thestate of Florida. He's got a very murky past and can't speak incomplete sentences if his life depended on it. But he's the proud ownerof a theme park called the Amazing Kingdom, one of the most unsafeplaces on earth And tourists throng there by the thousands, eager topay their money and ride the stupid rides and see the stupid and oftenfake attractions. The Amazing Kingdom is home to the rare speciessection of the park and the proud owners of the last two survivingblue-tongued mango voles on earth. The only problem is that there is nosuch thing as the blue-tongued mango vole. These are just a couple ofgarden variety voles with blue ink regularly applied to their mouths.The government fell for it, though, and Kingsbury received a $200,000grant to further study these rare creatures.All would have been calm, if it hadn't been for the Mothers ofWilderness, a group of gray haired environmentalists led by a spry oldgal named Molly McNamara, who got wind of Kingsbury's plans to destroythe last remaining untouched island in the Florida Keys to put up a hugedevelopment and yet another 18 hole golf course. They decide to teachhim a lesson and hire a couple of inept thugs to steal the voles fromtheir habitat in broad daylight.The cast of characters here are typical Hiaasen -- Joe Winder, theoddball journalist who's life seems temporarily derailed when he takes ajob at the Amazing Kingdom in the press department; Pedro Luz, thechief of security with an acute addiction to steroids, a lousycomplexion, and a serious personality problem; Louie, the hitman fromJersey; Bud and Danny, the completely inept burglars recruited by thepistol packing Molly; and of course one of my favorite recurringcharacters, Skink, the former Florida governor turned swamp rat.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As usual Hiaasen is attacking the South Floridian powers that be in his hysterically satirical, environmentally-edged way... Why would someone kidnap cute blue-tongued mango voles? Do blue-tongued mango voles actually even exist? Have fun finding out...