Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2390456 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

Theroux is back, and he's feeling mean.
Paul Theroux writing on autopilot is still better than many other authors at the top of their form. His well-known ability to describe a place or person in just a few perfect words, his creation of believable characters with clear motivations, his ironic detachment as these same characters mess up their lives, and his depiction of a writer's battle with the demons of his craft are among his many brilliant qualities, all on vibrant display here.

Ultimately, however, this novel was a disappointment to me. Set in a 3rd-rate hotel in Honolulu, it has the characters and setting of a novel (and is called a novel on the cover), but it is so lacking in any sort of unifying plot, that it's not even possible to write a plot summary. The huge cast of characters has only one thing in common--they all live and/or work at the Hotel Honolulu. While some characters are complete enough that they could have been worked into a wonderful collection of short stories, others are seen only in tiny, three- or four-page vignettes and add nothing significant. Very much like the author, the narrator is a writer who has had a failed marriage and difficult divorce in England and who has come to Hawaii hoping to escape his bad memories and the pressures of the writing life. He likes Hawaii "because it [is] a void"--almost no one recognizes his name, and those who do have not read his books. He works as the manager of the Hotel Honolulu.

Distressingly, this fragmented book is shockingly mean-spirited in tone, going way beyond good-humored satire, and demeaning almost every aspect of Hawaii, its people, and its culture, while also taking pokes at some American icons. Virtually every woman in the book either is or has been a prostitute. All are dimwits. Even the narrator's wife is the product of a one-night stand between a Honolulu prostitute and John F. Kennedy, a man she supposedly never recognized in this most Democratic state. Hawaiian/Filipino girls are depicted as fair game, sexually, for their fathers, uncles, brothers, and other relatives. Hawaiians who speak pidgin among themselves are mocked and their language derided. When he uses Hawaiian words, Theroux sometimes deliberately misspells them. Fellow-author Stephen King (ironically, one of the truly great creators of plot) also takes a hit here, Theroux saying, "it takes only a modest talent to write about misery." In a particularly low blow, he even comments on King's near-fatal accident by saying, "Gross reality [the accident] overwhelms his puerile and implausible fantasies." This novel has its virtues, but it seems that modesty and tolerance are not among them. Mary Whipple