Hawaii

Rating:
Summary: Melodramatic Travelogue
Review: You've gotta wonder about a guy who goes out of his way to dream up one word titles. It's an affectation, like lip gloss or tassels. So humdrum it's supposed to be clever.

Michener's books are like his titles: affectations. And for titles so pithy, his books sure are looong. They are melodramatic travelogues, trying to pass off minutiae and exotic venues for epic drama. Unfortunately, they are as laborious as a family slide show. Of interest to the travel hound, but an ordeal to the poor guest forced to endure the whole presentation. We squirm, stifle yawns and sit the thing out for courtesy's sake more than anything else.

This book tries to be an epic by copying the trappings of the great works. It gallops over exotic geographies and spans historical if not geological time. War and Peace in grass skirts. Its problem is that it copies the time and space of the great works while foregoing both their dramatic passion and their majestic language. Michener is a pedestrian writer, and his workmanlike phrasing just doesn't pass muster for the job that needs doing.

The book has its good points. It is well researched and historically accurate. It is also filled with well developed, if stereotypical characters. There is the noble savage, the chauvinistic missionary, the saintly wife, the virile entrepreneur, the Rock-of-Gibraltar peasant woman, etc. On the face of it, this book has everything it takes to be a good read: fabulous setting, sweeping plot, varied cast of characters, some worthy and significant themes.

What it lacks is a soul. There's nothing here that speaks to the human condition, nothing that cuts to the very nub of things. There's no point to the suffering, except as a litany to suffering itself. We are supposed to identify with the aboriginal Hawaiians, then the Chinese, then the Japanese, not because they endured and overcame, nor because their spirit shone in the darkest hour, but because they were oppressed and exploited by often well meaning whites. Sorry, but after the horrors of slavery, holocaust, gulags and killing fields, suffering takes on a dimension that Michener's talent is simply not equal to.

By diminishing the epic scale and ignoring the personal scale, Hawaii lands in the worst possible place: the middling zone of mediocrity. If the reader wishes to experience a dramatic epic of the finest sort, then try the aforementioned War and Peace, or Les Miserables. Both books tie the sweep and grandeur of an epochal time and place to the physical and spiritual struggles of one man. They give the reader a soul to cling to and, in doing so, make the suffering both personal and real. They were also written by literary geniuses up to the task of imbuing their creations with unforgettable prose, vital characters and most of all, a penetrating vision that strikes to the very heart of life; things that Hawaii does not even try to deliver.

Rating:
Summary: Historical Fiction at its best...
Review: This was one of Michener's finest. Learning about tribal Havaki to the missionarys who settled and "civilized" Hawaii to the 20th century. This was amazingly rich book in its detail and love for the land. I would highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly Detailed.... Lot's of "fun" history....
Review: This book is a history lesson. The first 150 pages deal with the initial settling of Hawaii by the Polynesians. It is of course a fictional account, but is quite reasonable that the settling actually occurred this way. 1,000 years before Columbus sailed on his voyage of discovery.

Michener could have gone on with just this story. How the first settlers accomplished the discovery and settlement of the islands. It was that good.

But, then he goes to 1820 and begins the second story. The missionaries. I had no idea how the missionary culture of the time worked. Very rigid and controlled. They came mainly from Massachusetts. And, they were on a "mission".

I won't say any more about the story. As everyone knows, Michener is a very talented storyteller. His attention to detail is excruciatingly accurate. Sometimes too accurate, but always entertaining. And, you get a history lesson at the same time.

I plan on reading other Michener books in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Sweeping, biting, and brilliant
Review: I had my doubts about this classic at first. At over 1,000 pages, opening with an almost painstakingly slow account of the birth and evolution of the Hawaiian Islands in prehistoric times, it seemed ripe for pretentiousness. Was I ever wrong! The great James Michener knew and loved the islands, and it shows throughout this sweeping fictionalized history of our 50th state.

Dividing the novel into five historical eras ranging from the 9th century AD to the mid-1950s, Michener creates an amazingly detailed look at the evolution of Hawaii as we know it today, the people who created it, and the lands they came from. Through a diverse collection of characters, some of them based on real historical figures, we see both the good and the bad sides of the islands and their people. Michener doesn't pretend it was a painless evolution; his accounts of the Americanization of Hawaii are brutally honest about the greed and intolerance that played into it. From the anti-hero missionary Abner Hale, whose well-intentioned piousness caused more problems than it solved, to his more business-minded friends and descendants, Michener sees the first Americans in Hawaii as noble but ultimately selfish and often racist. The Chinese who came to Hawaii are cast in a somewhat more pleasant light, as personified by peasant concubine Char Nyuk Tsin, who literally builds a family empire from nothing in true American Dream fashion. (The account of her salvation of Hawaii's leper colony is perhaps the book's most harrowing chapter, but also its most inspiring in a way.) The later arrival of the Japanese and the persecution they suffered before and during World War II is also illustrated brilliantly; this was surely close to Michener's heart when he wrote the book, not long after the war. Although the final chapter, describing the evolution of a uniquely Hawaiian people, is somewhat less developed and convincing than the rest of the book, Michener's optimism for racial harmony after years of its absence is pervasive all the same.

Although the book is fictional, it's nonetheless a very realistic look at a land most of us think of as a paradise, as well as a rare look at the very American side of our most unique state. With a long and interesting story and consistently remarkable character development, it's sure to hold your interest no matter how long it may take you to read it.

Rating:
Summary: Michener's best
Review: This is definitely Michener's best work and one of my favorite novels. I have read it three times and love it more every time. The islands and the people are truly brought to life. I especially like the way Michener presents historical events honestly without trying to whitewash them. This was very courageous for a novel written in the fifties. Definitely read this book if you are planning a visit to Hawaii. You will see the islands in a different light.

Rating:
Summary: GOOD BY NOT HIS BEST...........
Review: THIS IS A VERY INTERESTING STORY OF HAWAII, BUT TO ME IT IS NOT
AS GOOD AS CENTENNIAL, TEXAS, ALASKA, OR CHESAPEAKE. IT IS IN THE SAME STYLE AS THE OTHERS BUT FOR SOME REASON, MAYBE IT'S ME,
IT IS LESS "LIVELY" AS SAY CENTENNIAL OR ALASKA. I WOULD
STILL RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN HISTORY AND LIKES "EASY AND INTERESTING" READING.

Rating:
Summary: The Island of Dreams
Review: This vast, sprawling book is an incredible trip through the history of not just the Hawaiian islands but also provides insightful looks at both the history and mind set of each of the various peoples that over time have come to the islands, found them beautiful, and stayed, each adding another layer of richness to the already incredibly fecund soil that makes up Hawaii.

This is not the type of history you remember from your school days, dull and filled with irrelevant dates. It is instead a vibrant group of stories about some very engaging people, from Malama and Teroro of the early Polynesian settlers, to Abner and Jerusha Hale of the harsh, bitter school of Calvinist religion, to Char Nyuk Tsin and her sons and their sons, a great extended family with tentacles that reach across every business and social circle the islands have. Some of these characters are entirely fictitious, some are amalgams of known historical characters, a few are directly modeled on the individuals you can find in the history books, but regardless of their source or historical accuracy, you will find yourself totally engaged by them, fighting their battles, feeling their sorrow, enraged by their foolishness and arrogance, crying with their happiness. And along the way you will find that you have learned a lot about these islands and their history, and will end the book wanting to know more (what has happened there since this book was published in 1959?).

Many people seem to find the opening section on the geological history of the islands somewhat dull, but, in showing how the islands took shape via wave after wave of titanic and destructive eruptions, it provides a perfect counter-point to the later sections dealing with each wave of people as they arrive at the islands. And for those whose impression of this book was formed by seeing the Max von Sydow/Julie Andrews/Richard Harris movie, which was based on only one section of this book, "From the Farm of Bitterness", you will find that the movie is a very pale reflection of what this book has to offer.

If this book has a fault, it is in the constant optimistic outlook that Michener presents, both in terms of history and of people. But is it so bad to look on the bright side of things for a change? I ended this book with tears of joy, and I think you will too.

Rating:
Summary: Those Haoles Drive You Nuts
Review: Parts of this book really made me mad. I love a Hawaiian and I was so angry reading about the way Hawaiians were treated by the missionaries and other Americans. In fact I put the book down rather than continue to read about those fool missionaries, but my dear Hawaiian told me to keep reading.

The book is organized in waves - the wave of Bora Borans coming to Hawaii, and why they came. The wave of missionaries bringing their damn fool ideas but still doing some good by eliminating human sacrifice in Hawaii. The wave of Chinese and why they came. The wave of Japanese from Hiroshima. And finally the closing section about post-war Hawaii. I would have liked another section about the wave of Filipinos and Puerto Ricans, but they aren't in the book. Something about Hawaii makes me think in terms of waves...

My favorite part of the book is the Bora Borans. It is the only part that doesn't bother us with those damn missionaries and their annoying descendants. I think it was the author's intention to have the readers despise these missionary descendants. You can tell just by their repetitive names. Every damn one is named Whipple Janders Hoxworth Hale.

James Michener is a storyteller, not a historian. In this book you can see that he is also a Republican-hating Democrat, which isn't a bad thing to be, not that the Democrats are anything to brag about. There are many people to despise in this book, many people who strain your patience. In fact, the one point that other reviewers on this site seem to have missed is that the characters are usually infuriating, annoying, stupid.

The star of the book is probably the Chinese lady Char Nyuk Tsin who was a kind of Mother Teresa to the lepers and also a canny business woman running a family empire. But the most lovable characters are the Hawaiians, like Teroro, Marama, Kelolo and Malama.

As far as plot is concerned, there are two stories that stand out. The leper colony is an excellent section. So is the Bora Bora tale. The weakness of the book is that so much time is spent on the business shenanigans of the missionary descendants and immigrants. Business just isn't that interesting.

James Michener is a good storyteller but his books sprawl and meander all over the place, keeping them from being really great.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome book after the first 16 pages
Review: I thought this book was really great. I had to read it as an assignment for school, so I started off thinking, "Great. This is going to be so BORING." And then the first 16 or so pages WERE rather boring, with all the geography and stuff. But once you get really into it, into the life stories of all the characters that are so wonderfully melted together, it's a really good novel. At points you even forget that it IS nonfiction, it's so realistic. From the opinion of a 15-year-old, good job, Michener.

Rating:
Summary: Required Reading for all mainlanders visiting Hawaii
Review: I was lucky enough to attend high school in Hawaii for 3 years and still have family there. I've read all I can get my hands on about Hawaii and took Hawaiian History in school.. I believe we even watched the movie version of this book in class!

Nothing I have seen or heard has more fully attempted to explain the Hawaiian experience (native, local, and haole) than this book. In the middle of the Pacific on the most beautiful islands on Earth, there lies a population which combines every culture of the Pacific shores. The only thing he really forgot to talk about was the food (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, Hawaiian, etc.)

I think the most enlightening part of the book for myself was the contrast between the native Hawaiians and the American missionaries and sailors. The kapu system the missionaries railed against allowed human sacrifices, polygamy, slavery, sexist behavior and other awful acts... but this book also exposes the American zeal for money and power and the racial exclusion of the non whites from power that has dominated modern Hawaiian history. Is there really any wonder after reading this book why the state of Hawaii will always vote Democratic?

Also interesting is the mention of the 442nd.. the real story of Hawaii from World War II. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie "Pearl Harbor", but it did a poor job of capturing any sense of the emotions of the people of Hawaii at the time. See the movie "Go For Broke" (only half the story really).. the story about the nisei who fought valiantly in Italy and soared to political power when they returned home.

It's refreshing for me to read and see anything about Hawaii, where people celebrate their diversity and respect their roots. It seems like people on the mainland are too focused on black and white issues as though people of other races don't even exist. Perhaps everyone needs a little Hawaiian history lesson. Then go visit Hawaii and see the sugar mills, fields, heiaus, mountains, valleys, waterfalls, streams, etc. Skip Waikiki!