This third installment about a Hawaiian hero—in fact, the whole trilogy—is worth a read.
Welcome to the wrap-up of a historical fiction series starring a 19th-century Hawaiian freedom fighter—many of the characters are back; old loves endure; and familiar hatreds flare.
Fernandez’s (Gods, Ghosts and Kahuna on Kauai, 2017, etc.) final installment of his trilogy begins with John Tana’s wife, Mahealani, being terrified by threats from the old native religion that her husband, now a Christian, scorns. It turns out that the danger is real. Mahealani and their son, JJ, are kidnapped, with the captors intending to ritually sacrifice the two. Meanwhile, John’s old friend Joe Still has returned and will be his strong ally, and the tale’s archvillain, sugar baron Robert Grant, is up to his old machinations. At the top of Grant’s agenda are the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and the annexation of the islands by the United States. (Seeing John dead is also on his to-do list.) John does save Mahealani and JJ, but almost too late. Mahealani is raped before the rescue and severely traumatized; JJ, groped by a leper, contracts the disease. Rather than have JJ sent to Molakai alone, mother and son escape to Kalalau, a beautiful valley that the lepers have made their own. But there is no safety in this Eden. Meanwhile, King Kalakaua has proved to be weak and a ditherer. A native coup to replace him with his sister, Liliuokalani, fails quickly. This is just the first attempt to save the Kingdom of Hawaii; the second, final try is compromised, a debacle. In the shambles of it, John meets his old love, Leinani, and…but that would be a spoiler. On balance, this last volume of Fernandez’s trilogy is successful. The novel is bolstered by a synopsis of the series and a helpful glossary. And the author keeps the plot moving briskly and believably. But speech is sometimes stiff (“he informed John”; “together we will seek ways”). In addition, it is very hard to keep all of the names straight. No blame there, though sometimes the confusion seems a bit gratuitous. Was Robert Wilson the Robert Wilcox readers met earlier in the book? Koolau is the name of a character but sometimes seems to also refer to a place. Still, John is a well-rounded character, and the chapters with him and his grandchildren are charming and prophetic. Actions scenes are Fernandez’s forte, and he is generous with them. History is a constriction because, of course, the “haole” colonizers did win, but the broken revolutions are well-handled. A subplot deals with the tension between John’s Christianity and the native religion. He is trapped between the two worlds. Is he heading for a hard choice between the new world that he is trying to deal with and the realm (including the religion) he was born into and that will always be pulling at him? And what shape will that new order take? This conundrum is beautifully captured in the story’s final image of the stalwart protagonist.
This third installment about a Hawaiian hero—in fact, the whole trilogy—is worth a read.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9990326-6-4
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Makani Kai Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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