The Downhill Lie

Carl Hiaasen took up golf as a teenager to avoid church and spend time with his father. Apparently, he was a lousy and bad-tempered golfer. After his father's death, Hiaasen quit. Thirty-two years later, he ventures back onto the golf course because he's "one sick bastard." THE DOWNHILL LIE chronicles about 600 days of "relapse" with typical Hiaasen absurdity: a turtle is sent airborne, rats are dispatched to the beyond with a weighted training club, a golf cart is sunk in a pond, and desperate self-help products from infomercials are sampled. Hiaasen's tone is appropriately and hilariously self-deprecating. He is both continually surprised by his ineptitude and he fully expects it, and his voice reflects that dichotomy perfectly. A funny memoir even for those who don't play golf. A.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

June 30, 2008
Everybody knows how funny Hiaasen can be in print, but unfortunately something not so funny happens when he reads his own book about starting up again as a golfer after dropping the sport 32 years ago. Sentences that get a chuckle on the page sound pretentious or flat. Even though Hiaasen is reading his own material, his delivery is not relaxed and sounds stilted and actorish. There's some touching stuff as Hiaasen talks about his childhood memories of playing golf with his father, who died early, and real anger as he talks about how overdevelopment and crooked golf junkets are doing serious damage to his beloved Florida. But your money may be better spent buying several of the author's wacky mysteries—or a lesson from a golf pro. A Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 3).