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Florida Man
Florida, circa 1980. Reed Crowe, the eponymous Florida Man, is a middle-aged beach bum, beleaguered and disenfranchised, living on ill-gotten gains deep in the jungly heart of Florida. When sinkholes start opening on Emerald Island, not only are Reed Crowe's seedy businesses--a moribund motel and a shabby amusement park--endangered, but so are his secrets. Crowe, amateur spelunker, begins uncovering artifacts that change his understanding of the island's history, as well as his understanding of his family's birthright as pioneering homesteaders.
Meanwhile, there are other Florida men with whom Crowe must contend. Hector "Catface" Morales, a Cuban refugee, trained assassin, and crack-addicted Marielito, is seeking revenge on Reed for stealing his stash of drugs and leaving him for dead (unbeknownst to Reed) in the wreckage of a plane crash in the Everglades decades ago. Loner and misanthrope Henry Yahchilane, a Seminole native, has something to hide on the island. So does irascible and pervy Wayne Wade, Reed Crowe's childhood friend turned bad penny. Then there are the Florida women, including Heidi Karavas, Reed Crowe's ex-wife, now a globe-trekking art curator, and Nina Arango, a Cuban refugee and fiercely protective woman with whom Reed Crowe falls in love. There are curses. There are sea monsters. There are biblical storms. There's something called the Jupiter Effect.
Ultimately, Florida Man is a generation-spanning story about how a man decides to live his life, and how despite staying landlocked and stubbornly in one place, the world nevertheless comes to him.
Meanwhile, there are other Florida men with whom Crowe must contend. Hector "Catface" Morales, a Cuban refugee, trained assassin, and crack-addicted Marielito, is seeking revenge on Reed for stealing his stash of drugs and leaving him for dead (unbeknownst to Reed) in the wreckage of a plane crash in the Everglades decades ago. Loner and misanthrope Henry Yahchilane, a Seminole native, has something to hide on the island. So does irascible and pervy Wayne Wade, Reed Crowe's childhood friend turned bad penny. Then there are the Florida women, including Heidi Karavas, Reed Crowe's ex-wife, now a globe-trekking art curator, and Nina Arango, a Cuban refugee and fiercely protective woman with whom Reed Crowe falls in love. There are curses. There are sea monsters. There are biblical storms. There's something called the Jupiter Effect.
Ultimately, Florida Man is a generation-spanning story about how a man decides to live his life, and how despite staying landlocked and stubbornly in one place, the world nevertheless comes to him.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published July 28, 2020
126 people are currently reading
2363 people want to read
About the author
Tom Cooper
2 books102 followersTom Cooper was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and now lives in New Orleans. His short stories have appeared in Oxford American, Mid-American Review, and Gulf Coast, among many others. Random House/Crown published his first novel, The Marauders, in 2015. He is at work on several new projects, including television scripts and novels.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 96 reviews
June 19, 2020
I enjoyed The Marauders, so I had high hopes for Florida Man. But the writing here is very choppy. I always worry when a book gives a list of characters at the beginning, like this one does. It implies the reader is going to have trouble keeping everyone straight. I actually had no trouble keeping the characters straight, I just had trouble giving two hoots about them.
Reed Crowe runs a half assed tourist attraction and hotel in 1980s Florida. He’s barely hanging on, unable to pay his bills. He’s meant to be a colorful, aging hippie kind of character. But he seemed flat. Wade, who works for him, is perpetually stoned and useless. And later, becomes worse than useless. Yahchilane is a native Indian who is the calm center to this group of misfits. Of them all, he was the only one that was truly interesting. Because of Reed’s past, a man named Catface comes for him. A warning, there are some scenes of graphic violence involving Catface.
The book is a mess. I’m not sure what the author was aiming for. I struggled to finish it.
My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.
Reed Crowe runs a half assed tourist attraction and hotel in 1980s Florida. He’s barely hanging on, unable to pay his bills. He’s meant to be a colorful, aging hippie kind of character. But he seemed flat. Wade, who works for him, is perpetually stoned and useless. And later, becomes worse than useless. Yahchilane is a native Indian who is the calm center to this group of misfits. Of them all, he was the only one that was truly interesting. Because of Reed’s past, a man named Catface comes for him. A warning, there are some scenes of graphic violence involving Catface.
The book is a mess. I’m not sure what the author was aiming for. I struggled to finish it.
My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.
August 23, 2022
Five Fantastic stars! Cooper hit it out of the park with this one.
Florida Man, on one level, offers us another journey through the great crime fiction motif of the young innocent finding a suitcase full of cash and hoping the bad dudes who lost it won’t figure out he’s got it and come looking for him. Here, the story brilliantly opens with a young couple parked at the edge of the Everglades doing what young couples do when the sky lights up and a plane crashes from the sky. Reed Crowe doesn’t see any survivors, but he finds packages and more packages of marijuana and creates a life for himself over the next decades as a beach bum on a wayward island off the Florida coast, operating a rank rundown motel and a tacky tourist boat ride complete with a fake swamp man pushing out of the morass on cue. And, like all good things, Reed knows things will change.
He may have married the girl and made a life, but years later they are still connected, though divorced, after their only daughter drowns in a neighbor’s pool. Reed still operates the motel and tourist trap. In fact, he’s trapped there and can’t leave. He operates it with his childhood friend, a pervy Drug-addled buffoon. It’s a life at the edge of the continent, where the land sloughs off into the ocean, and where civilization has barely made a dent.
Reed is still haunted by the what ifs- like what if the Scarface-like brutal Marielito assassin who lost his pot ever comes calling. And, of course, it had to be one so vicious that even Al Pacino would’ve turned tail and run off. Reed is also rootless and takes in Cuban refugees he finds on the beach.
But, this irreverent story is not just about a caper, not even merely about a caper in trying to get away with spending the drugrunner’s goods. It is a rich (at times hysterically funny) sketch of a unique Florida character and life there in the Eighties. Well-conceived, and just a great read.
Florida Man, on one level, offers us another journey through the great crime fiction motif of the young innocent finding a suitcase full of cash and hoping the bad dudes who lost it won’t figure out he’s got it and come looking for him. Here, the story brilliantly opens with a young couple parked at the edge of the Everglades doing what young couples do when the sky lights up and a plane crashes from the sky. Reed Crowe doesn’t see any survivors, but he finds packages and more packages of marijuana and creates a life for himself over the next decades as a beach bum on a wayward island off the Florida coast, operating a rank rundown motel and a tacky tourist boat ride complete with a fake swamp man pushing out of the morass on cue. And, like all good things, Reed knows things will change.
He may have married the girl and made a life, but years later they are still connected, though divorced, after their only daughter drowns in a neighbor’s pool. Reed still operates the motel and tourist trap. In fact, he’s trapped there and can’t leave. He operates it with his childhood friend, a pervy Drug-addled buffoon. It’s a life at the edge of the continent, where the land sloughs off into the ocean, and where civilization has barely made a dent.
Reed is still haunted by the what ifs- like what if the Scarface-like brutal Marielito assassin who lost his pot ever comes calling. And, of course, it had to be one so vicious that even Al Pacino would’ve turned tail and run off. Reed is also rootless and takes in Cuban refugees he finds on the beach.
But, this irreverent story is not just about a caper, not even merely about a caper in trying to get away with spending the drugrunner’s goods. It is a rich (at times hysterically funny) sketch of a unique Florida character and life there in the Eighties. Well-conceived, and just a great read.
August 1, 2020
I could not get into this book at all. The writing was extremely choppy and the characters where unlike able and not well developed. This book just wasn’t for me at all.
September 24, 2020
I have noticed that sometimes a book about Florida will receive rapturous reviews from people who do not live in Florida and yet fail to grab hold of readers who are residents of Florida. "Florida Man" by Tom Cooper is one of those books.
Its cover features raves from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, but as someone who is from Florida and has lived here most of my life, I kept running across inaccuracies and anachronisms that made me roll my eyes and wish the author had a better editor.
Even the basic set-up is flawed. The opening prologue features a pair of teen lovers whose rocking-boat coitus is interrupted by a fiery plane crash nearby. When they investigate, they find the crew appears to be dead. Meanwhile the boy, a young Reed Crowe, discovers the plane was smuggling marijuana and later he goes back and grabs all of it. The only problem: This part of the book is set in 1963. I don't want to say NOBODY was smuggling pot into Florida in the early 1960s, but I'm pretty sure they weren't smuggling it in any quantity, nor were they smuggling it from Cuba. (We know it came from Cuba because one of the guys in the plane didn't die, and he reappears in the novel later on.)
The book then jumps ahead to 1980, by which time Crowe and the teen girl he'd been with that night, Heidi Karavas, have been married and divorced, and their only child has died under murky circumstances. Crowe now operates a rundown motel and a roadside attraction called the Florida Man Mystery House. He got the idea from all the wacky "Florida Man" headlines he's seen. The only problem: The "Florida Man" meme didn't really get cranked up until around 2001, and it didn't take off globally until 2013.
There are a host of other mistakes that made me stumble while reading this book: Florida panthers are a tawny brown, not black; Florida's Everglades did not become infested with pythons in the 1980s, but rather 20 years later; the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission didn't exist under that name in the 1980s; the FWC did not hold its first "python rodeo" until 2013; there are no wild jaguars in Florida; gopher tortoises don't live in water, fresh or salt, but rather in burrows in the sandy scrub; etc.
The book also exhibits a shaky grasp of Florida geography. It's supposed to be set on Emerald Island, which appears to be part of the Ten Thousand Island chain on the Gulf coast, yet there are several references to Cooper City being nearby even though it's on the other side of the state. People drive eastward to Fort Lauderdale (on the Atlantic coast) several times, when I think people who really live down that way might rather drive a far shorter distance northward to Fort Myers or Naples, which are much closer.
Cooper is himself a native of Fort Lauderdale, and I read an interview with him in which he boasts about living all over the state before moving to New Orleans, his current home. And at the end of the book he lists a variety of non-fiction books he consulted while working on his novel. Yet somehow he made all these easily caught errors.
It's a real shame, because parts of the book are quite beautiful and exciting. The brief subplot involving Hector "Catface" Morales, the deformed yet unstoppable Marielito assassin who is out for revenge against Crowe, was a wild ride, if somewhat reminiscent of "Cape Fear" (although I don't know how he got from badly burned in Florida in 1963 to walking around in Cuba killing people, then to return to Florida in the Mariel boatlift in 1980 to hunt for Crowe). The subplot involving Crowe's childhood friend and motel employee Wayne Wade takes a dark turn I did not see coming at all, but it's over well before the book is. The one piece of the plot that lasts through nearly the whole book is a depiction of how Crowe's dislike for his Seminole neighbor Henry Yahchilane slowly turns to tolerance and then friendship, and that was lovely to behold but a slim reed on which to build a book of nearly 400 pages.
One other big flaw in the book is that Heidi and the other female characters in the book, particularly a Cuban immigrant named Nina whom Crowe falls for, get very short shrift from the author. We see them only from Crowe's own perspective. Heidi pops in a few times in the early going and then disappears after the first few chapters and nobody else is around to interact with Crowe much after that except for Wade and Henry. And apparently no one on Emerald Island is Black, because the first time we meet a Black character is when Henry flies to Europe at the end of the book. This does not reflect my experience as a Florida resident.
I guess part of the problem here is that with a title like "Florida Man," I expected a book that read more like one of Carl Hiaasen or Tim Dorsey's wacky crime thrillers, and this is not like that at all. It aspires to give us a portrait of Reed Crowe as a man in full, a Florida man, but in the end Reed is sort of the least interesting character in the book. Maybe that's the author's intention -- to show us that unless a Florida Man is doing something weird and wacky, he's just not that much fun.
Its cover features raves from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, but as someone who is from Florida and has lived here most of my life, I kept running across inaccuracies and anachronisms that made me roll my eyes and wish the author had a better editor.
Even the basic set-up is flawed. The opening prologue features a pair of teen lovers whose rocking-boat coitus is interrupted by a fiery plane crash nearby. When they investigate, they find the crew appears to be dead. Meanwhile the boy, a young Reed Crowe, discovers the plane was smuggling marijuana and later he goes back and grabs all of it. The only problem: This part of the book is set in 1963. I don't want to say NOBODY was smuggling pot into Florida in the early 1960s, but I'm pretty sure they weren't smuggling it in any quantity, nor were they smuggling it from Cuba. (We know it came from Cuba because one of the guys in the plane didn't die, and he reappears in the novel later on.)
The book then jumps ahead to 1980, by which time Crowe and the teen girl he'd been with that night, Heidi Karavas, have been married and divorced, and their only child has died under murky circumstances. Crowe now operates a rundown motel and a roadside attraction called the Florida Man Mystery House. He got the idea from all the wacky "Florida Man" headlines he's seen. The only problem: The "Florida Man" meme didn't really get cranked up until around 2001, and it didn't take off globally until 2013.
There are a host of other mistakes that made me stumble while reading this book: Florida panthers are a tawny brown, not black; Florida's Everglades did not become infested with pythons in the 1980s, but rather 20 years later; the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission didn't exist under that name in the 1980s; the FWC did not hold its first "python rodeo" until 2013; there are no wild jaguars in Florida; gopher tortoises don't live in water, fresh or salt, but rather in burrows in the sandy scrub; etc.
The book also exhibits a shaky grasp of Florida geography. It's supposed to be set on Emerald Island, which appears to be part of the Ten Thousand Island chain on the Gulf coast, yet there are several references to Cooper City being nearby even though it's on the other side of the state. People drive eastward to Fort Lauderdale (on the Atlantic coast) several times, when I think people who really live down that way might rather drive a far shorter distance northward to Fort Myers or Naples, which are much closer.
Cooper is himself a native of Fort Lauderdale, and I read an interview with him in which he boasts about living all over the state before moving to New Orleans, his current home. And at the end of the book he lists a variety of non-fiction books he consulted while working on his novel. Yet somehow he made all these easily caught errors.
It's a real shame, because parts of the book are quite beautiful and exciting. The brief subplot involving Hector "Catface" Morales, the deformed yet unstoppable Marielito assassin who is out for revenge against Crowe, was a wild ride, if somewhat reminiscent of "Cape Fear" (although I don't know how he got from badly burned in Florida in 1963 to walking around in Cuba killing people, then to return to Florida in the Mariel boatlift in 1980 to hunt for Crowe). The subplot involving Crowe's childhood friend and motel employee Wayne Wade takes a dark turn I did not see coming at all, but it's over well before the book is. The one piece of the plot that lasts through nearly the whole book is a depiction of how Crowe's dislike for his Seminole neighbor Henry Yahchilane slowly turns to tolerance and then friendship, and that was lovely to behold but a slim reed on which to build a book of nearly 400 pages.
One other big flaw in the book is that Heidi and the other female characters in the book, particularly a Cuban immigrant named Nina whom Crowe falls for, get very short shrift from the author. We see them only from Crowe's own perspective. Heidi pops in a few times in the early going and then disappears after the first few chapters and nobody else is around to interact with Crowe much after that except for Wade and Henry. And apparently no one on Emerald Island is Black, because the first time we meet a Black character is when Henry flies to Europe at the end of the book. This does not reflect my experience as a Florida resident.
I guess part of the problem here is that with a title like "Florida Man," I expected a book that read more like one of Carl Hiaasen or Tim Dorsey's wacky crime thrillers, and this is not like that at all. It aspires to give us a portrait of Reed Crowe as a man in full, a Florida man, but in the end Reed is sort of the least interesting character in the book. Maybe that's the author's intention -- to show us that unless a Florida Man is doing something weird and wacky, he's just not that much fun.
August 4, 2020
I went into “Florida Man” expecting something similar to novels written by some other well known Florida writers. They typically write about the bizarre and wacky residents of the state and the mad-cap and comical events that occur. While Tom Cooper has aspects of those elements in “Florida Man,” the comedy is a little darker and the story takes a sometimes serious and sobering look at life in a supposedly idyllic location.
Reed Crowe operates a sketchy motel and amusement park on Emerald Island; an island inhabited by a variety of social misfits. Over the decades, Reed is forced to deal with his ex-wife, his degenerate friend who manages the motel, a vicious assassin, memories of his dead little girl, epic storms, and a variety of other calamities. As he comes to terms with the way he’s lived his life and all the mistakes he’s made, he recognizes “he’d changed. Or time had changed him” and that turns out not to be a bad thing.
Cooper’s outstanding story-telling abilities, character development, and the combination of intense and poignant writing makes “Florida Man” a winner.
Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Reed Crowe operates a sketchy motel and amusement park on Emerald Island; an island inhabited by a variety of social misfits. Over the decades, Reed is forced to deal with his ex-wife, his degenerate friend who manages the motel, a vicious assassin, memories of his dead little girl, epic storms, and a variety of other calamities. As he comes to terms with the way he’s lived his life and all the mistakes he’s made, he recognizes “he’d changed. Or time had changed him” and that turns out not to be a bad thing.
Cooper’s outstanding story-telling abilities, character development, and the combination of intense and poignant writing makes “Florida Man” a winner.
Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
June 20, 2022
This was a buddy read with my wife, who also wrote much of the content of this review. She tends to write and think a lot like me, so this probably won't be the last of our collaborative efforts:
Too lazy and distracted for a full-blown midlife crisis, Reed Crowe, a depressed and perpetually stoned, single 40-something, ekes out a spartan living, running a cheesy museum tourist trap and no-tell motel on the borderland of the swamp and beaches of the Emerald Coast. He's just learned his best friend and business partner, Wayne, is a serious pervert. His beautiful and talented, but estranged, wife drops by just often enough for him to fall in love with her again. And an insane, amoral, Terminator-meets-Scarface Cuban drug-dealer and assassin, whom Crowe inadvertently wronged over a decade ago, has finally found him and is hellbent on exacting his revenge. Through an unlikely series of events, he and a reluctant Seminole neighbor begin discovering some genuine historical ephemera, help a sweet family of Cuban refugees, try to make Wayne somebody else's problem, and dodge the crazy deformed smuggler. Somewhere in the midst of all the mayhem, Crowe eventually starts to grow up and grow a soul.
This novel tries to be a lot of things at once. It is almost a modern noir. We've got the classic crime fiction Macguffin of the lost stash (in this case, a shipment of marijuana that a young Crowe takes from the wreckage of a smuggler's plane). We have a cynical and broken, yet somehow still innocent, protagonist that gets caught up in the web of the underworld. It is also a dark comedy, with plenty of quirky and lost characters finding their way through what is supposed to be paradise. The human drama goes into some pretty bleak territory, but remains balanced by humor and is fairly grounded. His relationship with his neighbor, for example, was a pleasure to watch grow from distrust to tolerance to friendship. There are elements reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk, Augustin Burroughs, and David Sedaris. And while it feels like a light, slightly outrageous, page-turning beach read, there are some deep and thoughtful patches in the narrative that may make you pause and reexamine your own life and what it means to have a life worth living.
Cooper now lives in my hometown of New Orleans, but is a native of Fort Lauderdale. The book gets a share of criticism that Cooper wasn't careful about his Florida geography, nor what Florida was like in the 60s through the 80s. He does seem to confabulate space and conflate time a bit, but for the most part, I felt he did a fine job capturing the special magic of this part of America. I vacationed with my family in the Redneck Riviera at least three times a year for a good three decades, and I consider it my second home. The salt and seaweed from the Gulf has not been diluted from these veins after years of landlocked Midwest living, and Cooper's prose brought back the taste of the brine in the air, the feel of the sand between my toes, the hiss of the surf, and even the faint smell of decay among the sea shells, starfish, shark teeth, dried alligator heads, and various examples of taxidermy in the myriad of roadside tourist traps I visited just like the one our hero operates. And besides, those readers not familiar with Florida won't care anyway. It is best not to go into this book with a digital mind and just literally sail with the tide.
So pull of your flip flops, pour yourself a frozen concoction that helps you hang on, and enjoy this meme brought to vibrant life by a fun little summer read.
Too lazy and distracted for a full-blown midlife crisis, Reed Crowe, a depressed and perpetually stoned, single 40-something, ekes out a spartan living, running a cheesy museum tourist trap and no-tell motel on the borderland of the swamp and beaches of the Emerald Coast. He's just learned his best friend and business partner, Wayne, is a serious pervert. His beautiful and talented, but estranged, wife drops by just often enough for him to fall in love with her again. And an insane, amoral, Terminator-meets-Scarface Cuban drug-dealer and assassin, whom Crowe inadvertently wronged over a decade ago, has finally found him and is hellbent on exacting his revenge. Through an unlikely series of events, he and a reluctant Seminole neighbor begin discovering some genuine historical ephemera, help a sweet family of Cuban refugees, try to make Wayne somebody else's problem, and dodge the crazy deformed smuggler. Somewhere in the midst of all the mayhem, Crowe eventually starts to grow up and grow a soul.
This novel tries to be a lot of things at once. It is almost a modern noir. We've got the classic crime fiction Macguffin of the lost stash (in this case, a shipment of marijuana that a young Crowe takes from the wreckage of a smuggler's plane). We have a cynical and broken, yet somehow still innocent, protagonist that gets caught up in the web of the underworld. It is also a dark comedy, with plenty of quirky and lost characters finding their way through what is supposed to be paradise. The human drama goes into some pretty bleak territory, but remains balanced by humor and is fairly grounded. His relationship with his neighbor, for example, was a pleasure to watch grow from distrust to tolerance to friendship. There are elements reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk, Augustin Burroughs, and David Sedaris. And while it feels like a light, slightly outrageous, page-turning beach read, there are some deep and thoughtful patches in the narrative that may make you pause and reexamine your own life and what it means to have a life worth living.
Cooper now lives in my hometown of New Orleans, but is a native of Fort Lauderdale. The book gets a share of criticism that Cooper wasn't careful about his Florida geography, nor what Florida was like in the 60s through the 80s. He does seem to confabulate space and conflate time a bit, but for the most part, I felt he did a fine job capturing the special magic of this part of America. I vacationed with my family in the Redneck Riviera at least three times a year for a good three decades, and I consider it my second home. The salt and seaweed from the Gulf has not been diluted from these veins after years of landlocked Midwest living, and Cooper's prose brought back the taste of the brine in the air, the feel of the sand between my toes, the hiss of the surf, and even the faint smell of decay among the sea shells, starfish, shark teeth, dried alligator heads, and various examples of taxidermy in the myriad of roadside tourist traps I visited just like the one our hero operates. And besides, those readers not familiar with Florida won't care anyway. It is best not to go into this book with a digital mind and just literally sail with the tide.
So pull of your flip flops, pour yourself a frozen concoction that helps you hang on, and enjoy this meme brought to vibrant life by a fun little summer read.
August 4, 2020
Florida Man by Tom Cooper takes a look the mythos of the crazy stories surrounding the various news story dubbed "Florida man." This novel is awfully hilarious in it's character studies of Floridian rednecks, Cuban refugees, and American Indians. Most of the stories involve sex, drugs, violence, theft, and sometimes all four. The novel spans for the 1960's to present spending most of the time in the 1980's. The novel has it's problem but it is filled with so much charm, it's hard not to fill satisfied when i finished it. I felt like the characters were straight out of an Elmore Leonard novel, but with enough originality to make them unique. Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for giving me a copy for review. Florida Man by Tom Copper is published on 7-28-20.
The Plot: When Reed Crowe was a teenager he watched a plane go down in the Florida Everglades. The plane was filled full of weed from Columbia, he thought everyone was dead but he was wrong. Reed Crowe took drugs and sold a lot, he sold enough to buy and build a seedy motel, an run down zoo and amusement park on the remote Emerald Island. He's a beach bum that hired his friends to help him run the place, all who would rather do drugs and get laid. His world is turned upside down when a Cuban that goes by the name of Catface because of his scars, recognizes Reed when he gets his friend and employee out of jail. Catface was there in the 60's when reed found the drugs, and blames reed for not noticing and leaving him stuck with the scars. This vicious gangster will stop at nothing to kill Reed.
What I Liked: The humor is constant through out, it sometimes guys doing horrible things but for the most part it is funny. Catface is scary and relentless, almost a pincushion literately, they character takes a licking and keeps on ticking. This novel is not known for it's descriptions but I felt it described this character perfectly. Wayne Wade is another crazy character that would make so many bad choices but it was a train wreck that was entertaining to watch. I enjoyed the ending, it did something very unexpected, where I was super iffy if tis was the right choice but I was satisfied with the ending, that was very true to one character's character.
What I Disliked: The descriptions are really lacking, it will name this exotic Florida animal and not describe it at all. The book has an over 10 year jump and doesn't catch the reader up with anything that has happened in the last 20 years, which I found really frustrating. I did wonder the point of this novel about midway through, and it's more of a character study than a narrative story.
Recommendation: This novel is not going to be for everybody, the beginning is a little bit of a mess with it's weird time jump. I often wondered the point and where it was going. That being said, the novel is funny if you like show like swamp people, and shows about redneck culture then this book may be right up your alley. There is a trigger warning on violence and a character liking girls too young. I would slightly recommend this one on humor alone. I rated Florida Man by Tom Copper 3.5 out of 5 stars . This one is the most torn I've been on a review in a while, I will read another novel by Tom Cooper.
The Plot: When Reed Crowe was a teenager he watched a plane go down in the Florida Everglades. The plane was filled full of weed from Columbia, he thought everyone was dead but he was wrong. Reed Crowe took drugs and sold a lot, he sold enough to buy and build a seedy motel, an run down zoo and amusement park on the remote Emerald Island. He's a beach bum that hired his friends to help him run the place, all who would rather do drugs and get laid. His world is turned upside down when a Cuban that goes by the name of Catface because of his scars, recognizes Reed when he gets his friend and employee out of jail. Catface was there in the 60's when reed found the drugs, and blames reed for not noticing and leaving him stuck with the scars. This vicious gangster will stop at nothing to kill Reed.
What I Liked: The humor is constant through out, it sometimes guys doing horrible things but for the most part it is funny. Catface is scary and relentless, almost a pincushion literately, they character takes a licking and keeps on ticking. This novel is not known for it's descriptions but I felt it described this character perfectly. Wayne Wade is another crazy character that would make so many bad choices but it was a train wreck that was entertaining to watch. I enjoyed the ending, it did something very unexpected, where I was super iffy if tis was the right choice but I was satisfied with the ending, that was very true to one character's character.
What I Disliked: The descriptions are really lacking, it will name this exotic Florida animal and not describe it at all. The book has an over 10 year jump and doesn't catch the reader up with anything that has happened in the last 20 years, which I found really frustrating. I did wonder the point of this novel about midway through, and it's more of a character study than a narrative story.
Recommendation: This novel is not going to be for everybody, the beginning is a little bit of a mess with it's weird time jump. I often wondered the point and where it was going. That being said, the novel is funny if you like show like swamp people, and shows about redneck culture then this book may be right up your alley. There is a trigger warning on violence and a character liking girls too young. I would slightly recommend this one on humor alone. I rated Florida Man by Tom Copper 3.5 out of 5 stars . This one is the most torn I've been on a review in a while, I will read another novel by Tom Cooper.
March 28, 2023
Wow-eee! There were times in this book that I thought that surely the end of the story had come, but the beauty of this book was that the plot was as persistent as the Florida Men it portrayed. I’ve known these men. The grumpy ones who walk their land and appreciate what has been left for them. The stoic ones who take in their friends when the friends have no power to ask for it. The stubborn ones who do the right thing to their own detriment.
Although set in the Everglades at times that stretched my entire lifetime, the places seemed familiar enough to my south Texas roots that I could taste the brine in the air and feel the salt crinkle my hair.
The title does it no service and doesn't give any indication about the charm of the book.
Although set in the Everglades at times that stretched my entire lifetime, the places seemed familiar enough to my south Texas roots that I could taste the brine in the air and feel the salt crinkle my hair.
The title does it no service and doesn't give any indication about the charm of the book.
October 11, 2020
I lived in Florida. I grew up in Largo and lived in St. Pete. So, I’m very familiar with the state. I’ll have to say, the geography in the book was very confusing to say the least. I hate that.
Also...did you think no-one would notice you ripped off Swamplandia?
Something else bugged me about the time line: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember Yahchilane being about 20 years older than Crowe. That kinda makes sense because Crowe had the hots for Yahchilane's daughter, Natasha. If this were true, that would make Yahchilane about 95 at the end of the story in 2019. What do you think?
Also...did you think no-one would notice you ripped off Swamplandia?
Something else bugged me about the time line: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember Yahchilane being about 20 years older than Crowe. That kinda makes sense because Crowe had the hots for Yahchilane's daughter, Natasha. If this were true, that would make Yahchilane about 95 at the end of the story in 2019. What do you think?
March 6, 2022
A very moving story
At first, wasn't sure about this book. But it just got better as I read on. Everything is described so well. The characters are great, believable. They feel like old friends.
At first, wasn't sure about this book. But it just got better as I read on. Everything is described so well. The characters are great, believable. They feel like old friends.
June 18, 2022
Ever try the Florida Man meme? You know, go to google, put in "Florida Man" and the month and day of your birth and see what turns up. Mine came up with a man who burned his house down making cookies while naked using a George Forman Grill, an incident of a man arrested for pleasuring himself with an ice pack in front of first responders who came to assist after he called with breathing issues, and a Florida Man arrested for giving his girlfriend a "wet willy" and a man accused of smelling a woman's feet in the local library and leading police on a scooter chase.
OK, you get it, this is a weird and wacky place so you will not be surprised that this book is filled with weird and wacky people doing weird and wacky things. I enjoy Florida authors and books about the state but this one, while it does have entertaining moments has some strange interpretations of Florida geography, wildlife and hurricane naming procedures (storms arriving late in the season, October, would not start with an "A".)
But those are relatively minor distractions among the strange goings on in the plot. A bit brutal in places, demented in others and some strange folks populating an island in Southwest Florida. Some interesting Florida insights so if you are new to the state you might pick up some pointers. Might be a fun book to take to the beach.
OK, you get it, this is a weird and wacky place so you will not be surprised that this book is filled with weird and wacky people doing weird and wacky things. I enjoy Florida authors and books about the state but this one, while it does have entertaining moments has some strange interpretations of Florida geography, wildlife and hurricane naming procedures (storms arriving late in the season, October, would not start with an "A".)
But those are relatively minor distractions among the strange goings on in the plot. A bit brutal in places, demented in others and some strange folks populating an island in Southwest Florida. Some interesting Florida insights so if you are new to the state you might pick up some pointers. Might be a fun book to take to the beach.
December 5, 2020
As I read Florida Man, my initial reaction was that the novel was a Carl Hiaasen wannabe, but Cooper develops his main character, the Florida man Reed Crowe, more fully and ultimately more poignantly than Hiaasen ever strives for. Crowe is a beach bum, living on an island off the gulf coast, haunted by the death of his young daughter, Otter, and pursued by both real and imagined terrors. The novel accompanies him through decades of stoned appreciation of sunsets, encounters with a cast of eccentric conchs, terror of being vengefully murdered by a crack-addicted drug smuggler, devastation at the dawning realization of the depraved nature and acts of his childhood friend, Wayne, and an emerging understanding of the part his family has played in the exploitation of the native Seminoles.
March 4, 2021
Move over Carl Hiaasen, Tom Cooper has arrived. Great story dedicated to the residents of Emerald Island, Florida that describes "old Florida" living. You get to meet all the long term residents or "old conches" and learn how they interact with each other. The main character, Reed Crowe, is a teenager in love at the beginning of the book. Who becomes a kind of aimless, ambitionless beach bum.
If you've read other reviews I've written about books I've read you know by now I love a book that is character focused rather than plot focused and this one certainly qualifies. Cooper is a good writer who keeps the story moving and has the uncanny ability to show you aspects of a character's mind even he is unaware of.
If you've read other reviews I've written about books I've read you know by now I love a book that is character focused rather than plot focused and this one certainly qualifies. Cooper is a good writer who keeps the story moving and has the uncanny ability to show you aspects of a character's mind even he is unaware of.
December 2, 2020
Florida Man wasn't a bad book. The characters were interesting and the writing was outright beautiful , and the going on's of this book was outlandish but in a good way. The only reason I gave this book 3 stars was because I felt like it didn't really have much of a plot. There are a lot of books like that, but this felt more like a series of short stories rather than one huge one. It seemed to ramble at times and it was cut into chapters that felt like unrelated stories or stories that did nothing for the whole of the book.
Stylistically, I think this book just wasn't for me. But props for entertaining characters!
Stylistically, I think this book just wasn't for me. But props for entertaining characters!
July 22, 2020
This book is a crazy ride through Florida with aging beach bum Reed Crowe. There is an assortment of quirky characters including drug dealers, a misanthrope, and Crowe's ex-wife who is still in and out of his life. In addition, there are sinkholes, an amusement park, and other odd locations. Spanning several generations, the novel certainly shows Florida at its craziest and is an interesting romp with many laughs.
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
July 27, 2020
When Reed and Heidi, two 17 year olds, find a huge cache of marijuana in a burning plane, they're convinced it's the best thing ever. Well now, years later, that find has come back to bite them. The thing is, things aren't so great for Reed. Heidi's left him to move to New York, his daughter died, and his business- the Florida Man amusement park and the Emerald Island Inn- are being encroached upon by the legendary Florida sinkhole. Worse, even after years, Catface Morales wants what he lost in that plane. It's hard to capture everything that happens in this novel that could almost be described as roliicking. There's a vivid cast of characters who pop in and out over the course of Reed's life. There's no easy answers either for any of them. The synopsis might remind you of early Carl Hiaasen (there's more bite than Dave Barry) and that's a fair comparison. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's a fast paced entertaining read than sometimes gets a bit too too but that didn't hamper my enjoyment.
March 10, 2023
I had high hopes for this one, but it turned out to be kind of a mess and all over the place, and something of a slog to get through. Most of the characters were unlikeable, and not particularly memorable. Perhaps Mr. Cooper should have read more Carl Hiaasen and James Hall before embarking on this.
August 28, 2020
Grew to like it. More violent than I had anticipated but overall satisfying. Gulf island/southwest Florida setting descriptions are spot on.
April 27, 2025
Good book
September 21, 2020
Book reads like a stalling car that revs up and dies repeatedly.
April 4, 2021
I was expecting something more absurd, like Tim Dorsey. I was also hoping for more of an overall plot; each section has the beginnings of a plot, but it doesn't really jell. I'd say it's a more "modern" novel, in that things happen, but for no particular reason.
Still, it's modestly enjoyable, as long as you leave your expectations at the door.
Still, it's modestly enjoyable, as long as you leave your expectations at the door.
August 8, 2025
4.5 stars, if The Big Lebowski was set in Florida and The Dude was a beach bum
June 21, 2024
Uncertain where the story was going for the first 2/3 of the book. But the final 1/3, where the protagonist's life was reviewed in retrospect, was revealing about late life perspectives and the unknown impact on others' lives. I enjoyed the final chapters.
September 15, 2020
Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for providing me with a copy of Tom Cooper’s novel Florida Man, in exchange for an honest review.
Spanning several decades, Florida Man is the story Reed Crowe and Henry Yahchilane, who form an unlikely friendship while living on a small island. Struggling from the loss of his child, affectionately nicknamed Otter, Crowe finds himself divorced and the proprietor of a struggling roadside attraction. Yahchilane, a Seminole native, and the older of the two men is a mystery. He is quiet with a tough exterior and rumors fly regarding his criminal inclinations. A skeleton and a sink hole bring Crowe and Yahchilane together, sealing their connection and changing the course of their lives.
Florida Man is a quirky and delightful ride. I read it over two separate trips to central Florida during the summer of 2020, which included an airboat swamp tour, putting me in the mood. The twists in Florida Man are impossible to anticipate, but even more impossible to predict was the emotional impact of the story. I was sobbing while reading the last chapters. I was caught off-guard by how much I grew to care about both Crowe and Yahchilane and even more, how much I related to them. On the surface, it would seem that I shouldn’t be able to relate to these men; I am a forty-three year old white woman living in the suburbs, yet I definitely connected with Crowe and Yahchilane’s lone-wolf, living their lives by their own terms attitude.
I understood how they felt connected to their island, Crowe even refusing to leave it to be with his ex-wife Heidi. Crowe has relationships with other women, but he will always love Heidi. When their daughter dies, Crowe becomes planted on the island, as Heidi leaves to travel the world, dealing with their grief in separate ways.
The first two-thirds of the story are primarily a tension-filled, roller coaster ride. When Crowe becomes involved with helping a Cuban refugee family, he discovers that his childhood friend is a pedophile, putting a young girl from the family he is helping, in danger. Crowe struggles with figuring out the best way to deal with his former friend, a man who shows no signs of remorse.
Crowe’s life is in danger, when an old enemy comes back to haunt him. Hector Morales, nicknamed “Catface” for his disfiguring scars, was left in the swamp when many years earlier, Crowe found his body near a plane crash. Crowe thought he was dead and left Morales, but not before taking a fortune’s worth of marijuana from the downed plane. Morales survived and never forgot Crowe’s face, vowing to track him down.
Morales is a first-rate villain, reminding me of the character Anton Chigurh from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, No Country for Old Men. Similar to Chigurh, Morales is terrifying due to his calm demeanor and unpredictable violence. We stay with Morales as he is on the hunt for Crowe and watch as he interacts with many side characters while on his mission. The reader never knows if Morales will brutally kill someone that crosses his path or simply wish him a good day. The tension is high.
Florida, with its sandy beaches, muggy weather, and thick swamps is a character in Florida Man. Beyond Cooper’s novel, the term “Florida Man” is often used to describe dumb criminals and drug addicts who make the news in the sunshine state for a variety of outrageous antics. Florida is often mocked and taken less seriously than other states. I’m a Los Angeles native, and we are also often dismissed as “La La Land” or a place where “Fake” people live. In some ways, Crowe and Yahchilane embrace their “Florida Man” reputations, but in just as many ways, they defy it. They are simply ordinary men who love their land. I relate. I often bristle when I hear Los Angeles stereotypes. I can see the nuggets of truth in the stereotypes, but I also see so much more that only someone who loves their city, loves their state, can truly understand. Yahchilane and Crowe are insiders and their Florida is different from the Florida people mock. Their version of a “Florida Man” has much more depth than haters could ever realize.
Cooper’s Florida Man is a wild ride and some of the most beautiful, affecting writing that I have ever read. It’s truly a unique literary experience that I highly recommend.
Like my review? Check out my blog!
Spanning several decades, Florida Man is the story Reed Crowe and Henry Yahchilane, who form an unlikely friendship while living on a small island. Struggling from the loss of his child, affectionately nicknamed Otter, Crowe finds himself divorced and the proprietor of a struggling roadside attraction. Yahchilane, a Seminole native, and the older of the two men is a mystery. He is quiet with a tough exterior and rumors fly regarding his criminal inclinations. A skeleton and a sink hole bring Crowe and Yahchilane together, sealing their connection and changing the course of their lives.
Florida Man is a quirky and delightful ride. I read it over two separate trips to central Florida during the summer of 2020, which included an airboat swamp tour, putting me in the mood. The twists in Florida Man are impossible to anticipate, but even more impossible to predict was the emotional impact of the story. I was sobbing while reading the last chapters. I was caught off-guard by how much I grew to care about both Crowe and Yahchilane and even more, how much I related to them. On the surface, it would seem that I shouldn’t be able to relate to these men; I am a forty-three year old white woman living in the suburbs, yet I definitely connected with Crowe and Yahchilane’s lone-wolf, living their lives by their own terms attitude.
I understood how they felt connected to their island, Crowe even refusing to leave it to be with his ex-wife Heidi. Crowe has relationships with other women, but he will always love Heidi. When their daughter dies, Crowe becomes planted on the island, as Heidi leaves to travel the world, dealing with their grief in separate ways.
The first two-thirds of the story are primarily a tension-filled, roller coaster ride. When Crowe becomes involved with helping a Cuban refugee family, he discovers that his childhood friend is a pedophile, putting a young girl from the family he is helping, in danger. Crowe struggles with figuring out the best way to deal with his former friend, a man who shows no signs of remorse.
Crowe’s life is in danger, when an old enemy comes back to haunt him. Hector Morales, nicknamed “Catface” for his disfiguring scars, was left in the swamp when many years earlier, Crowe found his body near a plane crash. Crowe thought he was dead and left Morales, but not before taking a fortune’s worth of marijuana from the downed plane. Morales survived and never forgot Crowe’s face, vowing to track him down.
Morales is a first-rate villain, reminding me of the character Anton Chigurh from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, No Country for Old Men. Similar to Chigurh, Morales is terrifying due to his calm demeanor and unpredictable violence. We stay with Morales as he is on the hunt for Crowe and watch as he interacts with many side characters while on his mission. The reader never knows if Morales will brutally kill someone that crosses his path or simply wish him a good day. The tension is high.
Florida, with its sandy beaches, muggy weather, and thick swamps is a character in Florida Man. Beyond Cooper’s novel, the term “Florida Man” is often used to describe dumb criminals and drug addicts who make the news in the sunshine state for a variety of outrageous antics. Florida is often mocked and taken less seriously than other states. I’m a Los Angeles native, and we are also often dismissed as “La La Land” or a place where “Fake” people live. In some ways, Crowe and Yahchilane embrace their “Florida Man” reputations, but in just as many ways, they defy it. They are simply ordinary men who love their land. I relate. I often bristle when I hear Los Angeles stereotypes. I can see the nuggets of truth in the stereotypes, but I also see so much more that only someone who loves their city, loves their state, can truly understand. Yahchilane and Crowe are insiders and their Florida is different from the Florida people mock. Their version of a “Florida Man” has much more depth than haters could ever realize.
Cooper’s Florida Man is a wild ride and some of the most beautiful, affecting writing that I have ever read. It’s truly a unique literary experience that I highly recommend.
Like my review? Check out my blog!
October 15, 2020
Tom Cooper knows Florida's history and culture. He knows its flora and its fauna and its foibles as only a sharp-eye native who loves bis home state can. He knows how to write colorfully; in fact, FLORIDA MAN feels as much, if not more, as a prose poem than it does as a plotted novel, ful of rich telling details. But that lack of novelistic heft gets in the way, however, as the characters and the setting and the various tensions among them never really achieve liftoff as a story with rising stakes and a discernible arc. Somewhere around the halfway pint, a murky revenge plot slowly rises from the Everglades ooze and even more slowly takes shape and gathers momentum. But we tourists? We saw nothing for a long while beyond surface beauty and had long ago moved on.
Beyond that, the many sentence fragments, scattered like shark teeth amid sea pebbles in a treasure-hunter's scoop, call too much attention to themselves, drawing the reader away the denizens of Emerald Island and my drawing away attempts to emotionally engage with them, to find a reason to care about them. And for all that color, FLORIDA MAN has no detectable sense of humor, or at least no ability to stick the punchline landings from hundreds of send-up setups. It gives this never uninteresting but never fulfilling novel the feel of having been written by a Carl Hiaasen with an MFA degree and a dour disposition. It's not a bad book, just a deeply disappointing and frustrating one.
Side note: FLORIDA MAN's cover is an exercise in criminal literary malpractice. It all but promises the sunny zaniness of a Jimmy Buffett song about salty rogues and sloppy-drunk lost boys, but delivers none of that within its pages. I hope the disparity in tone between book cover and actual book will be course-corrected come paperback time.
Beyond that, the many sentence fragments, scattered like shark teeth amid sea pebbles in a treasure-hunter's scoop, call too much attention to themselves, drawing the reader away the denizens of Emerald Island and my drawing away attempts to emotionally engage with them, to find a reason to care about them. And for all that color, FLORIDA MAN has no detectable sense of humor, or at least no ability to stick the punchline landings from hundreds of send-up setups. It gives this never uninteresting but never fulfilling novel the feel of having been written by a Carl Hiaasen with an MFA degree and a dour disposition. It's not a bad book, just a deeply disappointing and frustrating one.
Side note: FLORIDA MAN's cover is an exercise in criminal literary malpractice. It all but promises the sunny zaniness of a Jimmy Buffett song about salty rogues and sloppy-drunk lost boys, but delivers none of that within its pages. I hope the disparity in tone between book cover and actual book will be course-corrected come paperback time.
September 20, 2022
A Disappointment
It's too bad Tom Cooper used "Florida Man" for his title. The phrase deserved a better treatment than this. From his overuse of "bracken" to incorrectly describe the native Florida underbrush to his totally laughable lack of understanding of the mechanics of sinkholes, Cooper demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of Florida.
The book does not have a plot per se, but meanders along through a picaresque assortment of barely related incidents. It's as if Cooper read a few Carl Hiaasen books and thought to himself, I could write that. He clearly could not.
So the best Cooper managed is a kind of parody of a Hiassen novel with the hallmarks of a deranged, disfigured menacing figure to a Dude-like character complete with aviator shades. "Florida Man" is a derivative piece of dreck.
It's too bad Tom Cooper used "Florida Man" for his title. The phrase deserved a better treatment than this. From his overuse of "bracken" to incorrectly describe the native Florida underbrush to his totally laughable lack of understanding of the mechanics of sinkholes, Cooper demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of Florida.
The book does not have a plot per se, but meanders along through a picaresque assortment of barely related incidents. It's as if Cooper read a few Carl Hiaasen books and thought to himself, I could write that. He clearly could not.
So the best Cooper managed is a kind of parody of a Hiassen novel with the hallmarks of a deranged, disfigured menacing figure to a Dude-like character complete with aviator shades. "Florida Man" is a derivative piece of dreck.
January 26, 2021
This may be one of the best novels I have read in a long while. The multi-generational novel was sometimes funny, sometimes depressing, sometimes horrifying, and sometimes poignant. I audibly gasped when Reed Crowe died. I know he was a bit of a scumbag, but I grew to care about him from his teenage years to later life. His budding friendship with Yahchilane was great to see unfold. The themes of time passing, friendship, relationships, and being tied to land really were amazingly portrayed. The idea that if you stay in one place long enough, the world will come to you seems to me to be the worldview statement of the archetypical Florida man. This book portrays that beautifully. I cannot recommend this enough.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 16, 2020
This was easy to read and enjoyable. The writing flowed naturally and the characters were interesting. Sure there were some uncomfortable story lines but reading is not always about staying within your comfort zone.
Reed Crowe was entertaining, and his relationships (if you can call them that) made for good plot points. Setting the book in the 80s/90s worked out well.
Distracting and engrossing, just what I needed during this pandemic.
My copy was provided by NetGalley for review, all opinions are my own.
Reed Crowe was entertaining, and his relationships (if you can call them that) made for good plot points. Setting the book in the 80s/90s worked out well.
Distracting and engrossing, just what I needed during this pandemic.
My copy was provided by NetGalley for review, all opinions are my own.
August 6, 2023
Beautiful, haunting, real
The characters from this book live in my memory as alive as people I have lived with.
It's an original, beautifully written story of a man's life. You could pick it apart - complain about some things - but after letting it sit for a while, it now exists in my mind as a perfect thing. It made me laugh out loud, broke my heart.
Cooper has one of those rare writing styles that immediately makes me want to imitate it when I speak. Like Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke. Cormac McCarthy.
Please read it.
The characters from this book live in my memory as alive as people I have lived with.
It's an original, beautifully written story of a man's life. You could pick it apart - complain about some things - but after letting it sit for a while, it now exists in my mind as a perfect thing. It made me laugh out loud, broke my heart.
Cooper has one of those rare writing styles that immediately makes me want to imitate it when I speak. Like Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke. Cormac McCarthy.
Please read it.
November 21, 2022
I dug Cooper's previous novel (The Marauders) and so finally picked this up and made my way through it while in Covid isolation. The title of course invokes the now ubiquitous meme for the weird and wild stuff that the menfolk of Florida are infamous for getting up to. And while there is certainly plenty of weird and wild stuff that the cast of characters get up to, the book is more melancholy and reflective than the title might suggest. Set on the Southern Gulf coast somewhere maybe around Everglades City, it spans the mid 1960s to the late 1990s.
At the heart of it is Reed Crowe, a classic Florida coastal bum who scrapes together a living running a ramshackle motel he inherited, along with running a decrepit roadside attraction place with boat tours. We meet him at the start of the book, romancing his wife-to-be in a skiff as a Cessna packed with weed crashes into the water, leaving behind a bale of drugs to salvage. The story then hops ahead to the 80s, after his wife has left him, his daughter has died, and his main company is his childhood buddy Wayne, who finds new ways to eff-up and cause trouble every day.
Like Crowe, the plot kind of ambles around without any urgency or huge sense of direction as different episodes come and go. There's a thread about the skull of a missing old local which turns up in Crowe's possession, leading to a showdown with a dour local Seminole named Henry Yahchilane. There's a thread about a Cuban refugee family who wash up on the beach in a raft and Crowe shelters. There's a super dark thread about a Marelito psycho who kills and cuts people at the drop of a hat and is trying to hunt Crowe down. It's perhaps not quite as dark as the turn the story of Wayne's bumbling antics eventually takes though...
Tonally, it's an odd mix -- you have some of the comedy mixed with crime that one might see from Carl Hiassan or Elmore Leonard. But then some real nastiness as well, which is then cut with more tender and sentimental scenes that speak to a community of misfits who take care of one another. Underneath it all is Crowe's mourning and grief for the death of his daughter and how life might have been different.
Because it's such an odd mix, it's hard to say who might like it. It's not really any one thing, but it's colorful and ultimately surprisingly moving. There's a lot of small factual errors, and some wildly unlikely stuff, but readers who are willing to roll with the crazy and like the Florida vibe should give it 20-30 pages to see how it lands.
At the heart of it is Reed Crowe, a classic Florida coastal bum who scrapes together a living running a ramshackle motel he inherited, along with running a decrepit roadside attraction place with boat tours. We meet him at the start of the book, romancing his wife-to-be in a skiff as a Cessna packed with weed crashes into the water, leaving behind a bale of drugs to salvage. The story then hops ahead to the 80s, after his wife has left him, his daughter has died, and his main company is his childhood buddy Wayne, who finds new ways to eff-up and cause trouble every day.
Like Crowe, the plot kind of ambles around without any urgency or huge sense of direction as different episodes come and go. There's a thread about the skull of a missing old local which turns up in Crowe's possession, leading to a showdown with a dour local Seminole named Henry Yahchilane. There's a thread about a Cuban refugee family who wash up on the beach in a raft and Crowe shelters. There's a super dark thread about a Marelito psycho who kills and cuts people at the drop of a hat and is trying to hunt Crowe down. It's perhaps not quite as dark as the turn the story of Wayne's bumbling antics eventually takes though...
Tonally, it's an odd mix -- you have some of the comedy mixed with crime that one might see from Carl Hiassan or Elmore Leonard. But then some real nastiness as well, which is then cut with more tender and sentimental scenes that speak to a community of misfits who take care of one another. Underneath it all is Crowe's mourning and grief for the death of his daughter and how life might have been different.
Because it's such an odd mix, it's hard to say who might like it. It's not really any one thing, but it's colorful and ultimately surprisingly moving. There's a lot of small factual errors, and some wildly unlikely stuff, but readers who are willing to roll with the crazy and like the Florida vibe should give it 20-30 pages to see how it lands.
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