Hawaii: A Novel by James A. Michener Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Hawaii: A Novel
Book Review: Hawaii
Summary: 5 Stars
Having recently visited Hawaii I have found this book very intresting.
I have enjoyed previous books by Michener very intresting. This book is no exception.
Book Review: Hawaii is an incredible book
Summary: 5 Stars
I received Hawaii as a gift coinciding with my trip to the Big Island, and it enhanced my trip greatly. It has been nearly three years since I read Hawaii, and images of missionaries getting sea sick and pregnant on boats, Hawaiian royalty in huts, women giving birth under palm trees, Tahitians searching for a new star and Chinese laborers farming pineapples still float around in my head. This book changed the way I look at and experience history.Book Review: How to read Michener
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read almost all of Michener's books. Hawaii was the first, and I read it years ago. However, I discovered how to read the book without boredom that can set in when you're struggling through the pre-historic background. After several false starts, I finally started reading starting with the 2nd (and sometimes the 3rd) chapter. After the book was concluded, then I went back and read the first one or two chapters. With Michener, this technique has never failed me.Book Review: Impressive
Summary: 4 Stars
I've never read Michener's work before, but this book left me awed with his knowledge of history and storytelling ability. The book begins with a brief section on the formation of the islands, then plunges into a novella (100 pages) about the arrival of the original Polynesian settlers. After that, it jumps forward again to the 1820s and the arrival of the New England missionaries. After this point, the narrative is pretty much continuous, with new chapters covering both the background and the arrival of new groups (Chinese, Japanese) and continuing the story of those who were already there. At this point it becomes very much a family saga, spanning about 130 years (the book was published in 1959, so the narrative deals only with pre-statehood Hawaii).
Obviously there's a great deal of history here, somewhat fictionalized as it may be, and I've never learned about so many places and cultures in the same book. The depth of Michener's research and the details of his portrayal of the lifestyles and thought processes of people from so many different cultures, in particular, never failed to impress me. But the story is brought down-to-earth through the always-engaging struggles of the protagonists, and the plotting and characterization were certainly enough to keep me reading. The writing style is intelligent; I know some people find Michener too dense for their tastes, but for me this book was just right: much more intelligent than your typical pop lit, but still absolutely readable.
My one reservation about this book is that, while I think Michener was quite progressive for the 50's, there are some wince-worthy moments in his dealing with race relations and his characterization of women and their roles. It doesn't seem to have bothered many people, but there is the occasional bit that hasn't aged especially well. Other reviewers have found the dropping of old protagonists jarring as the story moves on from one generation to the next, but I think that's standard for family sagas, especially when they have the breadth of this one.
I highly recommend this book even to those who have no special interest in Hawaii, and I plan to read more of Michener's work in the future.
Book Review: Not Michener's Best
Summary: 3 Stars
I've read several Michener novels and this is frankly not his best work. As always, he spends plenty of time acquainting the reader with the locale, beginning with the formation of the earth's crust. I enjoy the historical and archaeological background, and thoroughly enjoyed the story of the early people who made that incredible journey of faith and will across the sea to found Hawaii. But with the arrival of the missionaries the story takes a turn, and I kept having to wonder whether or not Michener himself believed that their deliberate, disrespectful destruction of the beautiful, thousands of years old, Polynesian society was a crime against a human population. However, his telling leaves one to wonder, and in fact it seems that the author does not see the irony in his own telling.
To be fair, it is certainly challenging to write hundreds of pages about such a very unappealing character as the missionary Abner Hale (who believes unswervingly that his God is the only one, and that the religious beliefs of the Polynesian people is pure heathen fantasy that must be destroyed). His success is painfully unsettling, and is the crux of much of the story.
The book is long on missionaries, and short on connecting the reader with the culture that was willfully destroyed (in the name of God).
There are better Michener novels with which to spend a thousand pages of reading time.