Product Description

Newly married and having recently taken over the management of a hotel in Honolulu, a former writer is drawn into the chaotic lives of his guests and into the distinctive customs and rhythms of the distant island. As witness to the many contrasting, and often ribald, chronicles of the hotel's characters, he ultimately finds personal salvation through returning to writing once again. The result is this novel in eighty distinct episodes, a Chaucerian sequence of strange pilgrims and just-as-strange islanders confronting each other, and their fate, in the rooms of the seedy hotel.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #422145 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From the Publisher
Praise for 'Hotel Honolulu' by Paul Theroux
"What makes Hotel Honolulu so remarkable is the way it reveals the demons and doubts that beset a complicated man." -Sunday Times

"…The book is witty insicive and original." -Rob Forrester, Traveling, Daily Express

"…Paul Theroux’s skill as a writer ensures you become so embroiled in the lives of his characters, your interest is held to the very last page." -The list

"…Theroux’s best for a decade…alive, rich, demotic, breathing comedy...." -Independent

"…an engrossing tragicomedywhich no writer worth the name could fail to recount." -Independent on Sunday

"…Everything in Hotel Honolulu rings true. Above all, the generosity of spirit." -Sunday Telegraph

"Theroux has always been a remarkably vivid writer, and perhaps, never more so than here." -Sunday Telegraph

"Hotel Honolulu is cleverly constructed – a page turner" -The Times

About the Author
Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1941. His novels include Waldo, Picture Palace, the Mosquito Coast and Kowloon Tong. Paul Theroux has also published numerous travel books, including the Old Patagonia Express.

Customer Reviews

THEROUX IS A TRENCHANT OBSERVER OF HUMANKIND
Few capture the essence of a setting as sensitively as author Paul Theroux. One remembers with pleasure "Kowloon Tong" (1997), a vivid word portrait of China. Once more he renders unforgettable scenes in his latest work, "Hotel Honolulu," set in Hawaii where, by the way, Mr. Theroux maintains a second home.

But this is not the sun dappled island paradise of which many dream. It is instead a rather seedy spot, a down-at-the-heels 80 room hotel on an unimposing byway several blocks from the beach in Waikiki. "The rooms were small, the elevator was narrow, the lobby was tiny, the bar was just a nook."

The owner, Buddy Hamstra, a man with protean appetites, bridled at calling his place small. It was, he said, "Yerpeen."

Resident manager for this haven is an unsuccessful writer who has no hotel experience, but a sharp eye for observing and facile tongue for relating the human dramas that unfold behind closed doors.

Readers will find themselves drawn to the off-beat, flawed characters who visit the hotel, and reminded that Mr. Theroux is not only a trenchant observer of humankind but one blessed with limitless imagination and a powerful sense of place.

A fine collection of stories.
This was the first book by Paul Theroux that I had read, having been lent Hotel Honolulu by a friend. I enjoy reading short stories, but rarely read them, preferring full length novels. Hotel Honolulu struck me as an interesting concept with “80 rooms and 80 stories”. Upon completion I was far from disappointed.

Hotel Honolulu was an interesting collection of short stories because of the strand of continuity running through them. The stories revolve around guests and workers at the Hotel Honolulu, a secluded hotel in Waikiki. Guests come and go, providing a range of characters for Theroux to get his head round, and the book is essentially a collection of vignettes about different characters, perhaps fitting for a collection of stories set in a hotel, where there will obviously be rotation of guests.

Sex and death permeate many of the stories, and they are frequently witty. There is a diverse collection of characters, each with a unique story, and not one is repeated twice.

Theroux wisely does not just restrict himself to the guests, allowing us to build affection for those who work at the hotel too, the most obvious example being Buddy, the owner of Hotel Honolulu. By focussing on a series of characters throughout the book, Theroux encourages us to care for the characters, and it is also a useful way of helping the book to hang together. Were the narrator not to reveal his story, the book would be more of a revolving door collection, and wouldn’t have hung together quite as well.

Overall this is a coherent collection of short stories with a genuine connection to each other as opposed to the fact that they are between the same cover. Hotel Honolulu is a collection well worth reading and contains some of the finest short stories I have read.

Trust me (and him) - we know
I lived in Honolulu for a good portion of my 41 years on this planet. I worked in the "Hotel Honolulu" myself (you may fill in the quotes with any other two star hotel in Waikiki of your choice). As much as I love Hawaii, I have also witnessed the other side of a society desperately trying to forge a unity and promote a cultural heritage that has been destroyed by the very cliches it so forcefully champions in the media.

Reading Hotel Honolulu, I got goose-pimples (da kine chicken skeen) for the absolute correct portrayal of dialect, habit, and character of the "locals" (I may have just made enemies, I am aware). The plot may seperate itself, but it does all fit together in the end; and if I could write as accurate and wonderful about a place (and still tell a story or two), I would use the same format. However, I could never attempt the literary sharpness that Theroux has achieved (whether in one of his travel books or this solid work of fiction - although, I am convinced that it is largely rooted in fact...).

An absolute essential if you have ever lived in Honolulu; a please pick it up for your own sake if you like a book that doesn't close when you close the book.