Hawaii [Hardcover]

James Michener (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000OF9YW6
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (122 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate family saga, May 3, 2006

By 

Nina M. Osier (Randolph, ME USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hawaii: A Novel (Paperback)

This, as far I'm concerned, is the ultimate "family saga" novel. Some call it Michener's master work, and I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment.

HAWAII follows an organizational pattern familiar to readers of Michener's other huge historical novels. First he tells the geological and prehistoric story of the region that provides the book's setting. Next, he introduces characters from early in that region's history - characters whose descendants people the book's subsequent sections, joined by a new group of immigrants as each of the tale's installments unfolds. The Polynesians - the New England missionaries, whalers, and merchants - the Chinese - and finally, the Japanese, arrive in different eras and under different circumstances. Each of these groups finds its own place, or rather creates its own place, in a society that's both challenged and enriched by Hawaii's ever-increasing racial and cultural diversity.

Genealogy ties this vast story's threads together, yet each of its major characters exists as a memorable individual in his or her own right. The author never allows his book's colorful setting, or the exciting backdrop of world events against which local happenings play out, to upstage those characters - nor does he let them blur into each other, which could easily happen with this many for both author and reader to keep straight. But what reader could possibly forget the great Alii Nui Malama, no matter how many descendants of the original Malama wind up sharing her name? Who could forget missionary wife Jerusha Bromley Hale, or the Chinese concubine whose true name her hundreds of descendants never know?

HAWAII heads the short list of books that I can read over and over, and always find fresh. A master work, indeed!

78 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The great American novel, November 16, 2005

By 

Lilly Flora "by Lilo Drandoff" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Hawaii (Mass Market Paperback)

This may have been the first adult novel I ever read. I was 13, September 11th had just happened and my father was in a hotel across the street from the pentagon. I didn't know if he was ok until an hour after the plane hit, and when I found out I collapsed. He was fine, and I was exhausted from worrying. He had given me this book a week before, saying he read it when he was 20 and had surgery soon after and hallucinated that he relived the entire book in the recovery room.

Since this book is several million years long, that's quite an experience, as is reading this book. I've real quite a bit of Michener's works, and this is buy far his best. For one, there are only 17 pages about geology, not several hundred as in other books. For another, the clear connections of family through the generations in this book really make you know the main characters. For another, it's clear he loves Hawaii, as does anyone who's been there.

This book is the history of Hawaii. It's well arranged, first there are 17 pages of geology, then the Polynesian settlers get 100 pages. Next, we head forward a thousand years and the first Christian missionaries from the east coast arrive (and insisted on wearing wool clothing!) Then came the Chinese, and leprosy. Next the Japanese, and Pearl Harbor. Finally, the golden man emerges a mix of all these races and a good dash of Aloha spirit. Each section follows one or two families who intermix with those already established and intermarry and have children.

This book is fascinating. Every part of it excellent, although I especially love the missionaries, the Chinese family (they're just great characters and you learn so much about Chinese culture) and the descriptions of the Japanese American soldiers fighting in WW2.

Reading this book requires great amounts of patience, because there are rough patches, sections where 50 or so pages will go by without an interesting thing in them. But the great parts are truly great. It's easy to see why Michener is one of the greatest American writers when you read this. I have tried many of his other works and they don't come close to the quality of this book.

I recommend this to everyone, and I recommend you buy it, not check it out from a library. You'll want to read it again and again.

61 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Probably Michener's best novel, January 28, 2003

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hawaii (Mass Market Paperback)

Michener, the supreme storyteller, created some really memorable characters in this monster of a novel. The genre of blockbuster historical novels can seem somewhat dated (viz. the mammoth novels of Mitchell, Ferber, McCullough, Caldwell and Follett) but they are definitely delicious if you get a taste for them. Dated or not, Hawaii is a gripping tale of not-so-angelic missionaries, struggling immigrants and early Polynesian settlers. The characters are absolutely unforgettable.

I particularly liked the section of the book where the missionaries run headlong into the traditions of the Polynesian people, whether insisting they wear confining clothing in the tropical heat, or that they should quit their charming and practical tradition of dancing, swimming and surfing in the buff. The missionaries stubbornly eat dried apples shipped to them across the sea, and scorn the richly nutritious native fruits and vegetables unfamiliar to them. They wilt in their long underwear, donned by the season. They try hard to bring a foreign world to their religion in the belief it will benefit the people, but when two vastly different cultures clash, it is inevitably tragic. Michener writes about this clash in vivid, sometimes shocking detail.

This book has been filmed, used as a basis for a musical but nothing compares to reading the original. I couldn't put it down.