Ninety-Two in the Shade

By Thomas McGuane

Book Overview

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE - A stunning novel about a deadly rivalry in Key West from the acclaimed author of Cloudbursts . McGuane has constructed a novel with the impetus of a thriller and the heartbroken humor that is his distinct contribution to American prose. Tiring of the company of junkies and burn-outs, Thomas Skelton goes home to Key West to take up a more wholesome life. But things fester in America's utter South. And Skelton's plans to become a skiff guide in the shining blue subtropical waters place him on a collision course with Nichol Dance, who has risen to the crest of the profession by dint of infallible instincts and a reputation for homicide. "Thomas McGuane makes the page, the paragraph, the sentence itself a record of continuous imaginative activity.... He is an important as well as a brilliant novelist." -- The New York Times Book Review

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679752897
• ISBN13: 9780679752899
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A surreal adventure with manly overtones

This book is a lot of fun--observant, dramatic, very funny at times. It is a meditation on competition, capitalism even, where an upstart with his own peculiar reasons for wanting to enter the fishing-guide trade confronts an established competitor who simply won't tolerate anyone horning in on his trade. Their is mutual admiration-and mutual homicidal thoughts. An elegant dance ensues and escalates into real menace. McGuane writes often about outdoorsy sports like fishing, and his prose on these elements of the story is quite rich.

McGuane's best & most meaningful!

Sphex says it's simple: this book teaches those with an open, literate mind the difference between plot and story. The plot can be summed up in one line: man is warned not to do something, does it anyway, pays the price. But the story: that is something else altogether, encompassing images of America at its best and worst, the quintessence of its individuals and their follies and visions, leading to a glimpse of some possible, much-longed-for (in McGuane's world, at any rate) meaning to this cacaphonous, chaotic place/idea. McGuane is one of Sphex's all-time faves, and if you don't "get" this book, you certainly won't "get" the proctology sequence from The Bushwhacked Piano, so don't even try. So says Sphex.

A Great Introduction to McGuane

This was the first McGuane book I read, some years ago. I was enthralled by his luminous cinematic prose, striking descriptions, juxtapositions, quandaries, and general commentary on human relations in 20th century America. I could not stop reading this book. Have since read several others by McGuane and just picked up The Bushwhacked Piano. If memory serves, McGuane was one of Wallace Stegner's students in the creative writing program at Stanford years ago. Clearly, McGuane learned his lessons well.