If you can get past the false modesty of the narrator, whose allusions to his discarded fame only make him sound smug,...
“We’re multistory,” explains Buddy Hamstra, owner of the Hotel Honolulu, describing in a word not only the setting but the narrative structure of Theroux’s tale of a burned-out, middle-aged writer seeking salvation at the edge of paradise.
In the frame tale, profane, effusive Buddy, as pleased to be able to say that his manager wrote a book as he is to retire to his mansion, drink recklessly, and screw his masseuse, hires the nameless narrator to run his down-at- heels hotel. The manager, meantime, seduces Sweetie, daughter of the hotel’s resident prostitute, Puamana Wilson, who bore Ku‘uipo—Hawaiian for “sweetheart”—27 years ago after a brief encounter with a mainlander reputed to be JFK. When Sweetie gets pregnant, the manager marries her. (Condoms seem unknown in fecund Hawaii, where couples routinely engage in unprotected sex until they produce exactly one child.) Leaving the management of the hotel to his capable staff, he then settles down contentedly with his pretty, semiliterate wife and his precocious daughter Rose to watch his guests, whose stories burst forth like seeds from an overripe papaya. We meet Hobart Flail, eternal pessimist, whose doomsaying keeps ringing true; poisonous Madam Ma, whose flagrant attention-seeking takes a fatal turn; Jasmine the hooker, whose men pay her to leave; and socialite Mrs. Bunny Arkle, whose men pay her to stay. Eight-year-old Rose sagely reminds us that, while all happy stories are the same, unhappy stories are all different. So death is a frequent theme, as is incest—Puamana is raped by her father, Buddy’s wife Pinky by her uncle, and Mahina, an adopted daughter in search of her real father, is inevitably molested by him. What to make, then, of the narrator’s paternal fascination with Rose?
If you can get past the false modesty of the narrator, whose allusions to his discarded fame only make him sound smug, there’s wonder on every floor of the Hotel Honolulu.Pub Date: May 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-09501-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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