|
by: Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry; et al.
List Price: $12.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.36 You Save: $2.59 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780449001240
ISBN: 0449001245
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: January 20, 1998
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: January 20, 1998
Sales Rank: 99089
Studio: Ballantine Books
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In South Florida, everyone wants to get a head. But not just any head. A very famous human head--severed and snugged away in a cryonic container. A head that could spark a revolution and change the course of history.
Everybody wants a piece of the noggin: rotund gangster Big Joey G., a 102-year-old environmentalist, hard-boiled Miami reporter Britt Montero, lawyer Jake Lassiter, and a would-be dictator in exile--with ex-president Jimmy Carter and a lovable manatee named Booger thrown in for good measure.
With bodies piling up it's anybody's guess what will happen from one chapter to the next, as an all-star line-up of Florida's finest writers take turns at taking this outrageously original novel to the limit--and beyond.
Amazon.com Review:
Dave Barry starts the madness in Naked Came the Manatee, introducing a 102-year-old environmentalist named Coconut Grove and a manatee saddled with one of Barry's favorite monikers, Booger. Carl Hiaasen closes down the party, and in between, 11 of Florida's literati, including Elmore Leonard, John Dufresne, and Edna Buchanan, make twisted offerings to the affair: three severed heads, all bearing a remarkable resemblance to Fidel Castro; four murders; some sex; some espionage; even an appearance by Jimmy Carter and one by Castro himself.
Originally published as a serial novel in the Miami Herald's Tropic magazine, Naked Came the Manatee resembles a literary game of telephone, with each writer contributing a chapter and passing it on to the next, who then makes the most of what he or she is given. The result is a novel with wildly fluctuating styles and more crazy plot curves than a daytime drama, but thanks to these 13 masters of the craft this roller coaster of a book is almost as much fun to read as it obviously was to write.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Crazy good read!
I had a lot of fun reading this mess of a book, but if you are looking for a 'normal' novel then you might want to run the other way. This is NOT a book to be taken very seriously (and if you try then you'll probably end up hating it). It's like the pass a long stories you wrote with friends back in school - it jumps around adding and dumping characters at will and it sometimes seems like the authors wanted to see how crazy they could make their chapter end to see how the next author would write ... Read More
Rating:  - Too many cooks and all that . . .
If you are a fan of any of these authors, do yourself the favor of sticking with their individual efforts. Hiaasen's chapter (the final one) cracks broadly at the missteps of several previous authors. I enjoyed only 3 chapters (Berry, Hall, & Hiaasen), and I put up with the rest to see how Mr. Hiaasen would tie it up. Even his talents could not salvage this - and here, I strongly agree with other reviewers - MESS.
Rating: - The Bare Facts!
I found Naked Came The Manatee to be an enjoyable read. I liked the different writing styles that wove the storyline together. I borrowed the book from our local library and liked it enough to buy my own copy. It was interersting and entertaining. The reason I gave it four stars was because I thought Dave Barry's first chapter, though good, was a little too chock full of detail. Although I have read Carl Hiaasen's Flush and Hoot among others and have enjoyed reading Dave Barry for years, I ... Read More
Rating: - Don't buy it, don't even get it at the library!
First, I'd like to tell the authors that after reading this book, each of you owe me a few hours of my time which disappeared, worthlessly, from my life.
What starts out as a great idea - a gaggle of writers each crafting a chapter of a novel - quickly crashes into a confusing, poorly played game of "telephone."
You know "telephone" - the kids' game where one whispers something to the person next to him or her and the words circle the room, ending in an incomprehensible ... Read More
Rating: - Multiple Authors Make an Interesting Read
Back in the primary school days you probably partook in the exercise of everyone in the class writing a paragraph then passing the paper to the person sitting next to them who wrote the next paragraph, passed it to the next person and so on until everyone in the class had contributed to each of the 30 or so stories. Well that is exactly what the publishers of Naked Came the Manatee have done, with thirteen Florida authors, just on a bigger scale.
The quality of each chapter obviously ... Read More
|
