Stormy Weather

Rating:
Summary: Cloudy Grey Humor Extraordinaire!
Review: After weeks of overtime I escaped to the Sierra Foothills, hosted to a relaxing Thanksgiving weekend with Stormy Weather (thanks Bill & Karen!). The greatest disappointment of this book was that it ended before the weekend & I had no sequel!

"On August 23, the day before the hurricane struck, Max and Bonnie Lamb awoke early, made love twiece and rode the shuttle bus to Disney World." So begins this marvelously improbably tale which weaves together the paths of newlyweds, cons, thugs, and a living-off-the-land, scraggly haired ex-governor. Easy to pick up and slide into, difficult to put down, this romp into Hurricane Andrew's wake tosses quirky characters into chaos. Not as extreme as Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams), more of a down-home Good Omens (Pratchett & Gaiman) without devils or angels.

Character development is not intense, but the contrived situations that bring those characters to light actually seem plausible. Fewer laughs in this book and more subconscious chuckles. If you want something traditional & predictable, leave this one on the shelf and go buy Grisham or Clancy. But if a road-kill scavenging, toad-licking ex-governor piques your curiousity (and he's a much better guardian of the land than our current "president"), grant serious consideration to this book!

Five stars for creating an extremely improbable story and making it seem as natural as a tale about the Springfield 'burbs! Five stars for fun. A truly amusing diversion.

(If you'd to comment on this review, please click the "about me" link above & email me. Thanks!)

Rating:
Summary: Very Entertaining book
Review: When I sit down to read a book, I am usually searching for entertainment, Stormy Weather gave me that and more. The incredibly dark humor, and the bizarre twisting plot all tied into Hiaasen's political message about Florida sucked me into his strange mystery. One of the few mysteries I have that is so intriguing you don't have time to predict how its going to end, you're having fun on the ride not at the destination. I felt that he developed his characters very well, completely unique characters who make you wonder who the good guys are, everyone has their flaws and their upsides. Overall I found it entirely enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: Corny Weather
Review: This author was suggested to me because Hiaasen was supposed to be funny. To be fair it's probably rated poorly by me because it was very different than the stories I usually read. It had it's moments and it did keep me curious to end it.

It wasn't very funny and it lacked substance. What was the point of everything?

Rating:
Summary: Love Hiaasen
Review: Like the two-word titles of all his books, my title states from the outset the enormous pleasure that reading this author gives me. There is no better laugh-a-minute, screw-the-villians, state-the-truth-as-it-is writer who sees into the morass that Florida has become with the eyes of a native son, somewhat like the Indian in the commercial who stood on a hill, a tear trickling from his eye, looking over the polluted, overdeveloped plains of America. His take on born-again Christians, Cuban nationalists, land developers, medical and legal charlatans and just plain old bubba bad boys is acute, hilarious and unsympathetic. The "bad guys" usually die well-deserved and well-designed deaths. This is the best, if not one of the best of all his tremendous books. Hollywood, to no one's surprise, totally missed finding its creative orifice with both hands even in strong studio light when it cast the large-breasted, small-talented Demi Moore as the heroine (clearly described in the book as having small breasts and long lovely legs--does that bring Demi to mind?). On the other hand casting Burt Reynolds as the lusty Representative Dilbeck was genius and his adventures and character ring amazingly true and prescient as we have watched the Elian farce and the Catherine "I really am somebody" Harris fiasco in Florida. Can't wait to read Hiaasen's take on these two latest Florida embarassments.

Rating:
Summary: Wacky Crime Satire At Its Finest
Review: It's never very sunny in Hiaasen's Florida. But in this novel the post-hurricane landscape is littered with "broken trees and utility poles, heaps of lumber and twisted metal," to say nothing of "a typewriter and a tangle of golf clubs and a cedar hot tub, split in half like a coconut husk." No surprise, then, that the tempest has also shaken loose a platoon of the author's wackiest characters.

Chief among them is Skink, the one-eyed former governor who appeared in two previous Hiaasen books. Energized by the storm (which he spends tied to a bridge), Skink emerges from the Everglades to kidnap one of Dade County's more offensive tourists, a honeymooning New York ad exec.

Nearby, a nasty ex-con has joined forces with a gorgeous con artist in a plot to steal somebody else's home insurance. (This is not, to her credit, Edie Marsh's first choice for making money. She has spent the last six months in Palm Beach trying to sleep with a Kennedy.)

It says a lot about Hiaasen's view of humanity that his most likable character is a guy with the "perhaps unwholesomely exhilarating" hobby of juggling human skulls. By book's end, our hero will add to his collection--but not before Hiaasen drags in a runaway bride, some storm-addled monkeys and a roof inspector who has never been known to climb a ladder.

The author, a Miami Herald columnist whose book, Striptease, was made into a movie starring Demi Moore and Burt Reynolds, provides his characteristic incongruously happy ending. Despite Hiaasen's crusading tone (a Florida native, he sees evil lurking in the heart of every developer) and deadpan style ("The death of Tony Torres did not go unnoticed by homicide detectives, crucifixions being rare even in Miami"), there's something gently romantic about his writing.

Raucous, scathing but never mean-spirited, Stormy Weather goes a long way toward securing Hiaasen's place as America's premier satirist.

Rating:
Summary: Hell's A-Poppin' in Dark Florida Satire
Review: In "Stormy Weather," southern Florida is ravaged by a monster hurricane of Andrew-like proportions. What happens to the physical landscape is not as bad as what happens to the social landscape in the aftermath: into the devastation come bootleg contractors, shady insurance reps, assorted ne'er-do-wells and one honeymooning couple who just came out of voyeuristic interest.

Imagine what can happen when strangers inhabit a house pretending to be its owner--when a former governor has become a feral "wild man" out to wreak acts of eco-terrorism on behalf of his beloved state--when half the honeymoon couple gets kidnapped--then you'll get an idea of what "Stormy Weather" is like.

This story is told with typical Hiaasen crispness and pacing, and with his well-honed sense of timing. What I missed was not the humor, but the quality of humor. There is plenty of humor here, but 100% of it is black. It makes a book like "Strip Tease" look positively lighthearted by comparison. Still, readers of Hiaasen will enjoy this one and will know what to expect.

Rating:
Summary: question
Review: dear sirs,

excuse me, but why haven't you posted my review of Carl Hiaasen's Stormy Weather. I submitted it over a week ago.

thank you,

arik berglund ([e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: Skink & Ventura for President!
Review: I tend to read more 'highbrow literature' than beach books, and when I descend a tier or two, I usually find myself reading Elmore Leonard and Douglas Adams novels, which in my opinion, are a more than decent bridge between Haute Reading and Hedonistic Reading. (As an aside, I honestly can't think of any author who writes better dialogue than Leonard since Shakespeare.)

However, I have discovered a third author (Hiaasen) to match Leonard and Adams, and now have a triumvirate of authors to bring with me on future vacations. I guess my discovery is a little late in the making, but two things have prevented me from reading Hiaasen in the past. Number one was the film "Striptease." Number two was the marketing of Hiaasen's stories; someone at Knopf is convinced that Hiaasen's books should be packaged to resemble Caprisun drinks, and I have always, unfortunately, judged his books by their covers.

"Stormy Weather" was my first Hiaasen read, and I'm not sure storytelling gets any better than this. One of the knocks against Hiaasen is that his characters are a little TOO zany; that the plots are too muddled with unbelievability. However, if I wanted to experience stories that are as 'real' as life itself, I would just go down to the grocery store and study the air-conditioned ennui of shoppers picking through the produce section.

Hiaasen is a highly-intelligent humorist; indeed, as some have dubbed him, "the Twain of the crime novel." He owns Florida's culture and underbelly unlike any other author, and he makes you believe that his Florida, in fact, IS Florida: a phallic-shaped, theme-park kingdom filled with Captain Ahab-like former governors roaming the Everglades; hideously-deformed malcontents who ne'er think twice of taking human life; insipid insurance and motor homes salesmen; busty, brainy vixens; and the occasional skull-juggling gentleman of independent means.

His language is simple and easy-going, but the occasional reference to T.S. Eliot and Henry Miller lets the intelligent reader know there's a solid backbone beneath the pliant, palm tree prose.

Stormy Weather itself is entertaining, but at the same time environmentally thought-provoking. And Hiaasen's character Skink (whom he brings back in later books) is his own personal vigilante. It is sad to think that Florida, such a beautiful state at one time, has become a Plastic Flamingo. And nothing can probably be done to stop, or even stunt, its destruction by human greed. But Skink does what he can, and so does his Creator.

A great read; indeed, an imperative read for anyone interested in contemporary storytelling.

Rating:
Summary: Weather-Beaten
Review: Hiaasen got plenty of vicarious exposure thanks to Demi Moore's STRIPTEASE act. And like the former story, SW is steeped in dark humor and peopled by mumbingly grotesque personalities. The fast-paced plot depends on inconceivable coincidences that lead to fairly predictable outcomes. The theme, man against vicious man--no honor amongst thieves, is as worn as the weather-beaten Florida coast. But it is appropriate here, and environmental liberalism sticks better in Florida than anywhere else in the US.

Rating:
Summary: LOVED IT!
Review: As a native Floridian, I love Carl's books because so much of what he writes really hits home. I REMEMBER when the birds and monkeys were out loose after the hurricane! You may think he's making this stuff up, but it's scary how much is REAL! I also secretly like to see the tourists get messed with. Sweet revenge! Hilarious, sick fun!