Ninety-two in the Shade

by Thomas McGuane

Paperback, 1995

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Fiction

Publication

Vintage (1995), Edition: Reprint, 208 pages

Description

Set in Key West--the nation's extreme limit--this is the story of a man seeking refuge from a world of drug addiction by becoming a skiff guide for tourists--even though a tough competitor threatens to kill him.Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Media reviews

Tor.com

Now as an author, I occasionally get asked for my favorite novel. For bibliophiles this is always an exacting question, but for writers it’s a nearly impossible one. But if forced to name the book I push most often on others it is Thomas McGuane’s 1973 novel Ninety-two in the Shade... A

favorite section for me entails the two “hitchhiking” paragraphs late in the opening. Framed by the sentences “The trees along the road were full of catbirds…” and “This was the epoch of uneasy alliances…” right there, shattered like a fun house mirror, the protagonist’s madness is laid bare. Simultaneously McGuane defuses the horror of Skelton’s mental crisis with hilarity, all the while underscoring the novel’s theme of carrying on no matter what.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member NicholasPayne

I'm unabashedly in awe of McGuane, and this is the book that put me there nearly thirty years ago. He writes precisely and economically, my favorite qualities in an author. "Nobody knows, from sea to shining sea, why we are having all this trouble with the republic..."

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LibraryThing member SeriousGrace

Ninety-Two in the Shade is about a man (Thomas Skelton) who has always wanted to run a guided fishing tour off the Florida Keys. Not the fishing I had pictured for the month of June, but a form of it, I guess. Thomas is new to the business and even newer to competition. He is not without his share

of problems. The opening "scene" is Thomas waking up in a hotel and finding four people standing naked in a tub. Right away you know this isn't your typical River Runs Through It fishing story! Other quirks: violence that does (or doesn't) happen, relationships that are (or aren't) good, and the entire book is absent of chapters. I may have come across other books like this but never noticed this chapterlessness before. The only reason why this seems odd is because not having chapters makes it difficult to know where to stop!

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LibraryThing member o_nate

It's about a guy who drops out of a biology degree program and moves back home to Key West and decides to become a fishing guide - other than that, it's kind of hard to summarize. Eccentric characters, prose that frequently reaches for a kind of sunburnt beat poetry and often grasps it - it can be

darkly comic, political without being didactic, wise, funny and sad.

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LibraryThing member Cedric_Rose

Definitely going to read "Captain Berserko's" first two books. Lovely, unpredictable, lush prose and an interesting story. A groaning smörgåsbord of language, character, imagery, juxtaposition, dialogue and hilarity.
Hadn't for some while enjoyed a book the way I enjoyed this.

LibraryThing member unclebob53703

Gorgeously written, often hilarious story. The guy really has a unique way with language, and creates characters that are very much outside the mainstream. Unputdownable. (If that's not a word, it should be.)

LibraryThing member zmagic69

The usual from this author, extremely damaged characters behaving poorly and the author using a lot of unnecessary big words. There are moments of entertainment but for such a short book it takes forever to get through.

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