Quotable:

"In cooking, as in all the arts, simplicity is a sign of perfection." - Curnonsky

Friday, November 26, 2010

Nature Girl by Carl Hiassen

Hiaasen's formula is simple: make three stories about people who could be Floridians, mellow it out a little bit, and then produce witty and ironic humor, and therefore Hiaasen's characters are not beyond imagination.

Honey Santana is the main looney toon of this script, whose relationship with her ex (a devoted drug runner from the keys) and almost-13-year old son (what 13-year old boy isn't automatically Hiaasen fodder?) crosses a half Seminole who accidentally kills white men, an FSU coed who is known as a Seminole fan (and boy is she ever), Boyd Shreave (any mother's nightmare whose ambition is telemarketing) and his girlfriend Eugenie Fonda. Amid the trip, we meet Boyd's wife, Lily, her private investigator, Dealey, and the requisite freak of nature (mentally and in this book physically as well), Louis Piejack.

Putting these people in purgatory was easy - he put them onto Dismal Key - a real Florida Key located off the west coast of Florida. This nightmare on the water was beholden to the Calusa Indians who took oyster shells by the boat load to make the Key remain above water, and more recently has been the love of the indigenous rednecks who have made the middle of the island a kingdom of Old Milwaukee bottles. This island is best described by Hiaasen as a recycler's heaven.

The dialogue in any of his books is the secret. The characters are weird, but their dialogue is what carries his books, and this is no exception. You get what would come from the mouths of a bipolar mother (Honey), a burdened half Indian (Sammy Tigertail), a sex kitten who writes best sellers about her trysts (Fonda) and a indefatigable liar (Boyd).

Whenever you need light reading and a good laugh, Hiaasen is a proper prescription.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

I wanted to like Little Bee. I did love it for the first 100 pages or so! It is the story of a 16 year old Nigerian refugee wise beyond her years and her interactions with a suburban middle class British couple. They meet first on a beach in Nigeria where a horrific event takes place and then again when Little Bee is released from a refugee detention center outside of London.

The story is told in the alternating narrative voices of Little Bee and Sarah. Little Bee's voice is very good - entertaining, often funny, strong with an amazing will to live in spite of appalling circumstances. It is amazing to me that a white Anglo Saxon male could have written this character so well. Sarah I liked a lot less. I found her to be annoying, self centered and beset with Yuppie problems but I was intrigued with her one act of courage in the story. I did have some trouble aligning this act with the rest of her character.

The descriptions of the beach scene in Nigeria are excellent and I think plausible. The choices made by Sarah and her husband are thought provoking and haunting - does a momentary failure of courage doom someone? How would you react if you had an extremely short period of time to make a life changing, life saving decision? Is it courageous to do what Sarah did; is it cowardice to do what Andrew did?

The parts of the story that involve Sarah's son are quite well done and again often funny; he seems a very true to life character. Once events leave the retrospective telling of the events I think the plot twists are not realistic. The chapter where Sarah reunites with Little Bee on the airplane going to Nigeria is ridiculous. The ending is very problematic for me; no mother who had had the experiences Sarah had would willingly take her child into a dangerous place like Nigeria.

The back drop for this novel is how the Western countries treat immigrants, especially those needing political asylum. Additionally the dark politics of oil exploration in developing countries and globalization are also mixed in. I liked the way the author subtly integrated these issues into the story and I learned something in reading this book.

So in summary, while I did like and would recommend this book - there were some very compelling moments - I will remember the main character Little Bee and her story long after I've forgotten most.