Carl Hiaasen - Reviews

Chomp

Carl Hiaasen
Ember
Fiction, MG General Fiction/Humor
Themes: Country Tales, Stardom
****

Description

Wahoo Cray grew up among animals. His father, Michael Cray, is one of the best wildlife wranglers in Florida, with a small backyard zoo full of rehabilitation projects like Alice, the six-hundred-pound alligator, and Beulah, a python north of fourteen feet in length. But things have been rough for the Crays since Michael took a blow to the head; the concussion has left him unable to work for months. Wahoo's mom took a temporary job in China, teaching language skills to inept American businessmen, but that will hardly make a dent in the massive debts piling up, not to mention the daily feeding costs of the Cray critter collection.
Expedition Survival! is one of the hottest reality shows on cable. The star, Derek Badger, parachutes blindfolded into remote locations, braving wild animal attacks and living off the land... or so the viewing public believes. In truth, his stuntman makes his trademark jump. Derek spends every night in the nearest five-star hotel with a Jacuzzi, while a long-suffering production team arranges the "spontaneous" animal encounters. With his contract up for renegotiation, he needs a blockbuster show to justify the massive pay raise he's certainly entitled to - which means his crew needs to find the best wrangler in the Florida Everglades.
If the Crays hadn't needed the money, they never would've taken the job... and TV star Derek Badger would've never had an unforgettable date with reality.

Review

Chomp is a fast-reading send-up of "reality" TV. From the eccentric Crays to the egotistical Derek, from the surly airboat captain Link to Derek's long-suffering producer Raven Stark, a host of memorable, fun characters flood the pages, interacting in unexpected ways. While superficially whimsical, even slapstick at times, there's some deeper stuff going on here, especially in the subplot with Wahoo's not-girlfriend Tuna and her abusive drunkard of a father (who live, or rather exist, in a trailer in the Walmart parking lot, for the free electricity and water.) Hiaasen also managed the tricky feat of including adults in a Young Adult title who were not deliberately dumbed down; everyone, minor or adult, plays on a fairly level field with their peculiarities and problems, with none deliberately outshining the others. The story clips along at a fair pace, often amusing and fairly unpredictable, ratcheting up to a suitably wild finale. It was just a fun read all around.

Scat

Carl Hiaasen
Knopf
Fiction, MG General Fiction/Humor
Themes: Country Tales, Felines
****

Description

The day Duane "Smoke" Scrod Jr and biology teacher Bunny Starch squared off in front of the entire classroom, Nick and his friend Marta knew it wouldn't end well. Starch was the harshest teacher in the school, rumored to keep pet snakes and a taxidermy collection at home, and Duane... well, any boy who insists on being called "Smoke" and talks back to someone like Starch, even biting her pencil in half and swallowing the pieces, is surely up to no good.
Smoke doesn't even show up the next day for the class trip to Black Vine Swamp, a wildlife preserve in the Florida swamps, where Nick hopes he might finally see the critically endangered Florida panther. But then a wildfire chases them out - and Starch, a teacher who has never missed a day of class in her entire teaching career, disappears.
Did Smoke finally snap and live up to his nickname? Were his threats against Starch more than just bluff? And what was the strange, tannish shape Nick caught on video shortly before the suspicious fire broke out? As he and Marta investigate, they find themselves involved in a tale as tangled as the vines in the swamp, a tale of broken homes and mistaken assumptions and illegal prospecting and self-styled ecoterrorists... not to mention a critically endangered big cat.

Review

I've previously read (and greatly enjoyed) Hiaasen's Chomp, another story set in the Florida wilderness, with a young boy and girl encountering many strange animals and stranger characters. Scat has a similar feel, with two young protagonists surrounded by quirky people and nasty villains and Florida's strange wildlife... a feel so similar I couldn't help sensing a formula behind the story, one that hampered my overall suspension of disbelief. Nick's also a less intelligent main character; with his father recently maimed in the Iraq War, he decides to bind his own right arm and develop left-handedness - an admirable act of solidarity with his one-armed father, but one that makes zero sense when he and Marta are in very dangerous situations, and he doesn't even think to increase the chances of survival by freeing his dominant hand. (But, then, the adults are a bit brainless now and again, too, more caricature than solid characters. Skirting spoilers, I'm also not sure I bought a later plot development involving a trained bloodhound.) Hiaasen writes with love and authenticity (and visible agony) about the highly endangered Florida wilderness, and the peculiar people could be amusing in small doses, but overall I didn't feel it came together quite as well as Chomp did.