Description:
Ramona Romano is a young and beautiful Miami nurse whom you might, were you charitable, call "terminally insatiable." You might otherwise call her cheap, horny, cheesy, sleazy, dopey, and two other dwarves too explicit to mention. Well-built scuba-diving men, on the other hand, call her an answer to their prayers, and often. Her husband Gary has been shown the door. In his place is Ignatz, Ramona's freshly caught, five-foot iguana, and Enzo, a freshly shucked nightmare on the half shell. I went into the bathroom and took my clothes off and crouched in the corner between the toilet and the tub. I curled over with my arms clasped around my knees, my face against my thighs, the toilet bowl wedged into my side, trying to chill myself, to change into a rational woman. Gary would come back with a word. If only I could accept normal married life, make it my goal to have a good marriage, help each other. I stayed there a long time, willing my muscles to atrophy. I tried to give up all my wild notions, but it didn't work. I had seawater on the brain. Divers to explore. Enzo. Flowing freedom. Without a lobotomy, I couldn't change. Hey, Ramona: If Gary's Door Number 1, Enzo's Door Number 2, and the lobotomy's behind the curtain, take the curtain. But no--it's Enzo, and an inexorable slide into a special level of Miami hell tumescent with sexual deviates, sadistic drug runners, steroid-popping body builders--Ramona chief among them--and, finally, murderers. It's porn noir. It's a woman's unwise (if not unwholesome) quest for marginally attainable lust and unattainable freedom through a man who's of our species by definition only. It's Miami-hot pulp friction. Vicki Hendricks's Iguana Love is all of that, and it's only her second novel (after 1995's Miami Purity). And beyond all of that, and most importantly, it's very well-written. --Michael Hudson
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