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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Hawaii is a beautiful place with a complicated history, having over the course of more than one thousand years been settled by many peoples from many places, all of which have wrestled over its lands and wealth and made their indelible mark.
This book is over a thousand pages long in print. I listened to the audiobook, which is more than fifty hours long. But it’s not the sort of book that one listens to continuously, but the kind that you must tackle in bits and pieces to really appreciate Michener’s interwoven narrative. I would binge-listen to maybe ten to fifteen hours over the course of a week, get burnt out, and not listen again until several weeks. In the end, I started this book in April, and finished in October.
I’m providing you with all this minutiae because this is a book that’s full of minutiae, and so it’s apt. On one level Michener tells a sweeping history of hundreds of thousands of people, but he does this by distilling his focus down to a few representative individuals of each wave of settlers, in whose lives we can see the movement of the times in which they lived. The good thing is that Michener generally sketches these protagonists are compelling, complicated people, so you enjoy being along for the ride, even if you don’t always like it. Yet at the same time, history is complicated, and Michener acknowledges this and doesn’t shy away from leaving the big questions unanswered.
Of course, in a book this big, it is hard to avoid clunky sections, and we certainly have that here, especially in the early parts of every time we get introduced to a new major character. I found myself rolling my eyes at the way Michener represented characters’ sexual lives sometimes. And I must admit that the little ‘twist’ at the end had me groaning- innovative in 1959 maybe, but it feels rather out of line with the lovely sweeping story that came before.
This is the second Michener novel I've read, after "The Source." And I'm still not sure what to think of him. I've never read novels like his. They truly are history as fiction, and like history - there is no plot. A character we've been reading out suddenly dies. A tsunami sweeps in out of nowhere, a side character is swept away into the ocean, and we hear no more about it. But you know, that's how real life is. The problem is that it's not how stories are usually told. If anything, this is the biography about Hawaii, and the people are just the various factors that affect the life of Hawaii. Perhaps the central plot is about whether or not Hawaii will become a state, but even that comes and goes. I had to laugh when I watched one BookTube review promise not to reveal any spoilers, because it would be impossible to "spoil" this book. There is literally no plot, central conflict or main characters.
I do love history, and this is a very interesting way to tell the history of a place. Michener has a whole host of characters that he invented but are very true to history: Hawaiians, white missionaries and traders, Chinese and Japanese workers. No one is a true villain or hero, they all have their good aspects and their bad aspects. And if the characters are sometimes stereotypes, that is just as much true of the white characters as the rest. But this is also frustrating as a reader. Does Michener agree with what the missionaries did, or is he critical of them? I suppose in the spirit of Herodotus, by not making his views clear Michener is trying to leave it up to the reader. But I find myself wanting Michener to take some kind of position. Instead, he seems to be presenting every person and every situation from every angle.
While Michener might be considered a decent storyteller, he is not a good writer. Descriptions and dialogue can be very flat, almost as if this was the first draft of him trying to get the broad strokes down, but he never went back to refine it and make it readable. Listen to this bizarrely stilted fight scene:
"With a deceptive lunge to the right, followed by a snakelike twist to the left, Hoxworth **brought his powerful right fist into the policeman's face**.... The surprised policeman staggered backward and fell onto the deck, whereupon Hoxworth began kicking viciously at his face, but **remembering from the pain in his bare feet as they crashed into the man's head, that he wore no shoes,** he quickly grabbed a belaying pin and started to thrash the fallen islander.... Hoxworth continued hammering him until **sounds from other parts of the deck called him to activity there.**" The parts offset by the asterisks are so awkward and distancing, they pull you right out of the action.
Or how about this dialogue. Whip ran off to California with his wife Iliki's sister Nancy, and here they are breaking up:
[Whip] therefore decided to return to Hawaii, but Nancy Janders said, "I wouldn't, Whip."
"Why not?"
"Well, Iliki's there. That'll be embarassing for you. And I certainly can't go back with you."
"I don't think you should," Whip said coldly, and a few days later he added, "You ought to be looking for a man for yourself, Nance."
'You through with me?" Nancy asked.
"No place for you in Hawaii," he said truthfully. "How you fixed for money?"
"The family sends me my share," she assured him.
"Nance," he said in his most friendly manner, "I sure hope you have a wonderful life from here on out. Now you better get some clothes on."
---And that's literally the end of that little episode. Not all the dialogue is that bad, but a lot of it is.
So, I can't really recommend Michener if you're looking for a good and entertaining book to read. But if you love history, and want to explore the places he writes about, I do think he's worth checking out. He has certainly done his research, and his information is reliable as far as I can tell. He always has respect for his subjects, and if sometimes he slides into stereotypes and generalizations, he also writes some fascinating and sympathetic characters. His relative neutrality on issues is both admirable and frustrating. I can truly say I have never read any books quite like his, and I do fully intend to read more of his books.
I do love history, and this is a very interesting way to tell the history of a place. Michener has a whole host of characters that he invented but are very true to history: Hawaiians, white missionaries and traders, Chinese and Japanese workers. No one is a true villain or hero, they all have their good aspects and their bad aspects. And if the characters are sometimes stereotypes, that is just as much true of the white characters as the rest. But this is also frustrating as a reader. Does Michener agree with what the missionaries did, or is he critical of them? I suppose in the spirit of Herodotus, by not making his views clear Michener is trying to leave it up to the reader. But I find myself wanting Michener to take some kind of position. Instead, he seems to be presenting every person and every situation from every angle.
While Michener might be considered a decent storyteller, he is not a good writer. Descriptions and dialogue can be very flat, almost as if this was the first draft of him trying to get the broad strokes down, but he never went back to refine it and make it readable. Listen to this bizarrely stilted fight scene:
"With a deceptive lunge to the right, followed by a snakelike twist to the left, Hoxworth **brought his powerful right fist into the policeman's face**.... The surprised policeman staggered backward and fell onto the deck, whereupon Hoxworth began kicking viciously at his face, but **remembering from the pain in his bare feet as they crashed into the man's head, that he wore no shoes,** he quickly grabbed a belaying pin and started to thrash the fallen islander.... Hoxworth continued hammering him until **sounds from other parts of the deck called him to activity there.**" The parts offset by the asterisks are so awkward and distancing, they pull you right out of the action.
Or how about this dialogue. Whip ran off to California with his wife Iliki's sister Nancy, and here they are breaking up:
[Whip] therefore decided to return to Hawaii, but Nancy Janders said, "I wouldn't, Whip."
"Why not?"
"Well, Iliki's there. That'll be embarassing for you. And I certainly can't go back with you."
"I don't think you should," Whip said coldly, and a few days later he added, "You ought to be looking for a man for yourself, Nance."
'You through with me?" Nancy asked.
"No place for you in Hawaii," he said truthfully. "How you fixed for money?"
"The family sends me my share," she assured him.
"Nance," he said in his most friendly manner, "I sure hope you have a wonderful life from here on out. Now you better get some clothes on."
---And that's literally the end of that little episode. Not all the dialogue is that bad, but a lot of it is.
So, I can't really recommend Michener if you're looking for a good and entertaining book to read. But if you love history, and want to explore the places he writes about, I do think he's worth checking out. He has certainly done his research, and his information is reliable as far as I can tell. He always has respect for his subjects, and if sometimes he slides into stereotypes and generalizations, he also writes some fascinating and sympathetic characters. His relative neutrality on issues is both admirable and frustrating. I can truly say I have never read any books quite like his, and I do fully intend to read more of his books.
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
informative
Immersive, compelling historical fiction that taught me much about the history of Hawaii. As it approached the modern era I found it more of a slog, and didn’t share the pro-capitalist, militaristic perspective of the writer, but other than that it wax a fascinating story about intersecting and clashing cultures.
It's been a long time since I've read anything by Michener, but I picked this one up after a trip to Hawaii. It's a good, l-o-n-g yarn, but I don't yet have a good feel for how accurate the history is. Mostly enjoyed it.
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a great historical fiction that spans over 1000 years. Definitely a must read for anyone interested in humain migration to Hawaii and the islands history.
This book is almost 1500 pages long. It’s a commitment and you will start dreaming about girls from Bora Bora at some point. Loved almost everything. Lost a bit of interest during the communist phase towards the end.
This book is almost 1500 pages long. It’s a commitment and you will start dreaming about girls from Bora Bora at some point. Loved almost everything. Lost a bit of interest during the communist phase towards the end.
The exceptional aspects of the book (for me) were his descriptions of how the islands were formed, how navigation was used, how going around Cape Horn was akin to suicide and other details along those lines. Unfortunately, I lost interest in the characters and didn’t want to learn anymore about the history of Hawaii. DNF at 50%.