Tag: Kaui Hart Hemmings

Day 533: The Descendants

~ whatmeread ~ 7 Comments

Cover for The DescendantsIf you have seen the movie The Descendants, the book will not provide you with very many surprises. But that is looking at things the wrong way around. Perhaps the novel provides a stronger sense of betrayal and even more sympathy with the characters.

He may live in balmy Hawaii, but Matt King is struggling. His wife Joanie is in a coma after a boat-racing accident. He has been the type of father who is always working; now he is becoming conscious of his deficiencies as a parent. He finds his ten-year-old daughter Scottie harming herself. Then he learns that the reason his wife sent his teenage daughter Alex away to boarding school was because she discovered drugs in her room.

Added to all this turmoil is a decision he must soon make about his family’s property. A trust is being wound up and prime real estate could be sold. Some cousins want the most money while others favor a local developer. With the majority vote, Matt has the power to decide what the family will do with the land.

After Matt picks up Alex from boarding school, she explains a big blowup she had with her mother over Christmas. Alex had discovered Joanie was having an affair.

Joanie’s doctors decide that she is brain dead, so Matt begins gathering her friends and family to say goodbye. Learning from friends that Joanie had planned to leave him for her lover, Matt decides he should notify him too.

It is in trying to identify and contact this man that Matt discovers Joanie’s affair was a much bigger betrayal than he thought. He is also brought to consider what he owes to his Hawaiian ancestors, from whom his family inherited their property.

Although narrated in a light style that is sometimes funny, The Descendants deals with such issues as grief, anger, death, and infidelity. It is surprisingly affecting, and you feel you know and like Matt, his daughters, and their friend Sid. Most of the characters are well-meaning people who are trying to do the right thing. I enjoyed this novel.

Day 527: The Possibilities

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for The PossibilitiesAfter her son Cully’s death in an avalanche near their home in Breckenridge, Colorado, Sarah St. John is having difficulties. She has returned to work as a host of a local TV show but finds it hard to raise the enthusiasm needed. She is angry at the loss of her son, who had only just graduated from college, and is upset with herself for nagging him about his recent aimlessness. She is suffering from grief and a loss of identity.

Then she begins discovering facts about Cully that she didn’t know. She finds paraphernalia for selling pot in his room, which jolts her. A young woman named Kit comes to see her, pretending to want a snow-shoveling job, but she is really Cully’s girlfriend. Sarah had never even heard of her before.

Sarah’s family and friends are planning to attend a second memorial for Cully in Colorado Springs given by his friend Morgan. Sarah is dreading it, as she does not know how to deal with the sympathy or attention. Feeling the need to discuss the drug discovery, she asks Cully’s father Billy, whom she never married, to come see her the day before the memorial.

This novel is a wise and heart-warming, sometimes humorous examination of grief and of life’s surprises. As in The Descendants, a disjointed and somewhat alienated family becomes closer and gathers new members after experiencing grief and making hard decisions.

http://www.netgalley.comI found myself liking all the characters. Sarah is handling her feelings poorly but is sympathetically human. Her father Lyle is a retired public relations executive for one of the resorts. He is not doing retirement very well, giving his ex-coworkers unsolicited advice and buying too many gadgets on QVC. He moved in temporarily with Sarah and Cully and somehow never left, but Sarah likes him being there. Billy is calm and supportive, quietly dealing with his own grief. Sarah’s friend Suzanne, in the midst of a divorce, is at once annoying, interfering, and caring.

I will soon be reviewing The Descendants, but in The Possibilities I find another satisfying and touching novel by Hemmings.