Deep Water - Softcover

Date, S. V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 042518692X ISBN 13: 9780425186923

Publisher: Berkley, 2002

Synopsis

A witty satire of planned communities introduces readers to Serenity, Florida--the lifelong dream of amusement park scion Waldo Whipple--a town on the verge of a very public nervous breakdown. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

S. V. Date has been a professional journalist for fifteen years, most of them in Florida, first for the Orlando Sentinel and then for The Palm Beach Post, where he is Tallahassee bureau chief. This is his fourth novel.

From Publishers Weekly

Corporate America takes a beating in Date's latest tale of free enterprise run amok (after Speed Week and Smokeout), and anyone familiar with Carl Hiaasen will recognize the caustic, over-the-top, sometimes slapstick fallout. In an alternate-universe Orlando, Whipple World is Disney, where, as David Bowie once famously sang, "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow." Only here the Mouse, in roman ... clef fashion, takes the form of a cartoon muskrat named Morty. Ernest Warner, disillusioned reporter, and Emma Whipple, the park founder's great-niece, know something fishy is going on at the amusement park and its attendant "resort community," Serenity, but aren't sure what. They just know that anyone asking questions seems to quietly disappear. Date wants to tackle everything at once in this extended polemic: the marketing machines of big business, which through merchandising create phony needs; the acquisition of the media by conglomerate interests and the subsequent replacement of reportage with Chamber of Commerce-friendly fluff; the dangers of spin and propaganda in a culture that relies increasingly upon the media to tell it what to believe. The result is a plot weighed down by didacticism and a cast of villains and rogues who lack dimension. At their worst, characters revert to stereotype, as in the offensive case of the novel's sole Asian character, who says "l" instead of "r" in hackneyed fashion. Wading bravely into the deep end of satire, the narrative may sometimes seem about to founder, but Date's hero and heroine are eminently likable, and his writing is crisp throughout.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 042518692X
• ISBN 13: 9780425186923
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 304