Customer Reviews

House of Many Gods: A Novel

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With her lush descriptions of the topography and the almost operatic rhythm of her language, Kiana Davenport establishes the setting of her newest novel--a "wild place, the untutored place, where the Grand Tutu of the coast, the rugged Wai'anae Mountains, watched over the generations," the last holdout of pure-blood Hawaiians on Oahu. Opening in 1964, the novel focuses on Ana Kapakahi, a young girl from the poor coastal village Nanakuli, who is being raised by her extended family, her mother having departed for the mainland and a better life. Many of the elders in her family and neighborhood adhere to the old spiritual and cultural traditions, and they resent the fact that much of the land in these mountains has been seized by the US military, ending the Hawaiians' traditional use of the land and despoiling their sacred burial places and shrines.

Davenport traces the life of the resilient Ana, from 1964 to the present, as she progresses through school, college, and medical school, a journey of immense hardship and stress, contrasting Ana's life with that of her mother, Anahola (also called Ana), who is living comfortably on the mainland. She also introduces a surprising new plot element by comparing and contrasting Ana's life with that of Nikolai Volenko, a young Russian in Moscow. The two come together as adults when Hurricane Iniki destroys the Hawaiian island of Kauai and Ana, as a physician, offers medical aid. Niki, a videographer on a one-year fellowship to the US, arrives to record the events for a documentary.

Though the author might have used her plot to set up simple love stories in which the cultural differences among various lovers complicate their lives, Davenport goes much further than this, thematically, providing several points of focus. The three love stories are all complicated by the effects of the polluted environments in which the characters have lived, and the author minces no words in assigning blame for this pollution. At the same time, she emphasizes the spiritual values which can sustain believers, adding color and depth to her story by including unique Hawaiian rituals, legends, and descriptions of sacred places.

Using the personal story of Ana and her mother to provide the emotional base of the novel, Davenport is largely successful combining these seemingly disparate ideas, ultimately producing a moving family saga, a series of love stories, a number of domestic tragedies, an environmental novel, a political commentary, and a spiritual coming-of-age. As the action moves back and forth among the themes and plot lines, the novel draws in the reader, as mesmerizing as a hula. n Mary Whipple

I've becoming quite a fan of Kiana Davenport. Her themes are always about her native Hawaii. Her characters are symbolic as well as real. And her stories never fail to keep me up well past my bedtime. I read her latest book in a couple of days and just couldn't put it down. This was in spite of the fact that I generally knew what was coming. In fact, I welcomed it. Because, in the end, I knew there would be a happy resolution. And there was.

This is the story of a Ana, young native Hawaiian girl born in the 1960s. She's being raised by her extended family because her mother has deserted her. It's a house full of aunties and uncles and cousins who eke out a sparse living in rural Oahu, about a two-hour bus ride from the busy and bustling Honolulu. This is Ana's story, but it is also the story an unpleasant chapter in Hawaii's history, that of nuclear testing on its beaches, with the resultant illnesses of the people and devastation of the environment.

Against all odds, Ana grows up to be a doctor. She is not a happy person though. She has been shaped by the loss of her mother and is always angry. Even when she becomes ill, and her mother returns, she continues living behind emotional defenses.

But there is another character in this story. And, unlike Ms. Davenport's previous books, this character is not a native Hawaiian. He comes from far-away Russia and has experienced anguishes that make Ana's story pale by comparison. When Stalin came to power, this man's father was sent to a labor camp in the frozen north. His mother followed him, living in a house of ice with other women whose husbands were in the camp. During a secret visit to his father, Nicolai was conceived and the hardships he endured as a baby made me wince in horror. Later, he becomes a street urchin, starving and abused. However, he somehow manages to become a documentary film maker. And he specializes in filming the awful results of his country's nuclear testing.

Yes, he comes to Hawaii. He meets Ana. But this is not a simple love story. There are twists and turns and the reader is forced to view the unsafe world created by the Cold War and the march of progress.

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. I am fascinated by books about the Hawaiian people. And I am equally fascinated by books about the frozen north. Put these both together in a fast-paced story which also has a message, and I'm hooked.

If a book can be described in a single word, lush would be the one for Davenport's novel, House of Many Gods. Her stunning gift for description of place is evident not only in the passion she infuses into writing about her green Hawaii, where the part-Hawaiian author lives, but also to the passages putting us into the faded glory of St. Petersburg and the madness of modern Moscow. She takes us from "ancient serrated valleys, green velvet cliffs, then, tiny hidden beaches like opals" to "a room that could be crossed in eleven steps, life lived on an intimate scale" while outside are "the spires of St. Basil's cathedral, like giant swirling Dairy Queens." With Davenport, you are there.

For those not familiar with Hawaiian history, Davenport weaves in just enough background without slowing down the complex plot-and it is a big one, spanning generations, military presence, and several love stories in language that reaches poetry at times.

Although there are several stories interwoven here, the complicated relationship between Ana, the main character, and her mother, Anahola, a single mother who left her child by choice with family and moved to San Francisco, is particularly compelling-and authentic. Davenport is a marvelous storyteller. --Lorraine Dusky

Having read both of Kiana Davenport's other books, I eagerly awaited the release of this book and immediately pre-ordered it when the option was available.

When the book came, I looked at the cover and then at the premise of the story. I knew that this one was going to strike home a little bit more than the others (being set on the Wai'anae Coast...just down the hill and down the freeway in my childhood memories), so I let it sit on my shelf for a month before I read it.

What do I love about this book? Like the others, it brings to my rememberance the awesome history that all Hawaiian people share. Kiana is brilliant at weaving her fictional characters within the context of Hawai'i's history and always with an unflinching view toward the rape and damage that our people and our islands have experienced from the beginning. Most importantly, it brings it to the attention of people who only see a vacationing spot in June with smiling hula girls and help staff, mahalini (newcomers) who set up residence on the island for some years and believe that this gives them the right to be called kama'aina (technically Native Hawaiian, though some will say this may also mean "long-time resident"), and those who are just plain curious about these islands whose existance holds its people captive our whole lifelong - even when we move far away to escape its hold on us.

I heard about Kiana's book, when, while doing my own book tour, I saw her interviewed on Connie Martinson Books. I was so impressed with her I bought her book that afternoon and have since devoured all of her books. Kiana is not just a fantastic fiction writer; she is a poet, a master of understanding people's deepest dreams, wildest fears, hidden motivations, and greatest moments. She covers the worst and the best of what it means to be human in her stories, and the characters come alive; I found myself thinking about them when I wasn't reading the book and had to remind myself they were not real. Hawaii is my favorite place on this earth and she has given it to me with striking details and history I would never have known. Thank you Kiana.

As a faithful reader of Ms. Davenport's other books, which I have enjoyed thoroughly - I ran right out and purchased this new book of hers. I might make clear that I live full-time on the island of Kaua'i and have for many years.

I expected the theme of locals living in a beautiful, but economically depressed area, being taken advantage of by the military or large corporations. These were themes in all of her earlier books. I do not doubt the situation of Makua Valley at all - I too have heard stories of the desecration of this sacred valley by the U.S. Government and seen it
first-hand.

However, the one big criticism that I have of this book - is that Ms. Davenport gets so wrapped up in telling her tale of military destruction that she forgets her Hawaiian history.

In the book Ms. Davenport refers to Kaua'i as "The Flower Isle" -- I have never heard it referred to as that, but as the "Garden Isle" - okay, small criticism. Hurricane Iniki, which blew into Kaua'i 13 years ago - she turns into something akin to the Asian Tsunami of last year with many, many deaths! Yes, we suffered terrible damage to our homes, roads, etc. But there were 2 deaths - not the images of bodies being found and looting going on as in her book.

The biggest gaffe in the book (in my opinion) was that she referred to our last Queen Liliu'okalani as the "cousin" of King David Kalakaua! He was in fact, her brother - a very easy fact and one that every schoolchild here learns early on.

I did enjoy this book - her strong, damaged women always pull me in and except for the above mentioned problems - that could have been so easily fixed.

This is a tale of multiple generations in Hawaii. Anahola gives birth to a baby girl, also named Anahola, or Ana. But not long after, feeling as though she is not suited for motherhood, Anahola leaves Hawaii for San Francisco and spends the rest of her life there. Ana is left wondering why her mother left her and must deal with the resulting anger and resentment. However, she is still surrounded by family and friends that love her and encourage her to aspire to greatness. Over the years, Ana excels in school and ultimately becomes a doctor in Honolulu. But her life is never truly happy despite her accomplishments. Breast cancer finds her and destroys what little happiness is left.

Meanwhile, Nikolai is a young boy raised in desperate conditions in Russia. He lives wondering when his next meal is going to be and never gets a chance to meet his father who is a political prisoner. He falls in love and marries, but his wife, along with many other citizens, falls ill and dies from chemical poisoning that pervades the county from lab experiments and testing. Nikolai has trouble finding himself and trusting others and basically wanders from place to place filming the ravaged people that suffer from this chemical poisoning.

Ultimately, Ana and Nikolai find each other. But both are so broken that it is difficult for them to trust each other and themselves. They must first discover who they are as individuals before they can discover what type of a relationship they can have together.

This book has interesting descriptions of history and traditions both from Hawaii and Russia. But the characters are so selfish and stubborn that they are offputting. The story never really flows, and at times it is difficult to keep the characters straight. It is hard to feel sympathy for the main characters when so much of their misery is self inflicted. Granted, they both suffer in their lives and all is not roses, but they are so self centered and miserable despite having family support in the case of Ana, that they are difficult to like.

This is a stunningly good read -- Davenport is a great story-teller. She weaves the story in and around Hawaii and Russia, seemingly unrelated places, but pulls them together with her characters and their concern for each other and the environment. I couldn't stop reading it, waiting for the next event . . . and the next. She took me into her world and I was sorry when it was finished.

Ana Kapakahi is left to the care of her sprawling storybook family as a child, when her mother leaves Hawaii to find a better life in Los Angeles. Planted in Ana's soul when she's barely a red-mud-footed toddler in the hills of Nanakuli, the seed of her mother's rejection grows into pride and ambition that drive Ana to become the first college graduate in her family, a role-model to uncles maimed by every American war and cousins on the
brink of despair and drug-addiction. Although she grows self-sufficient and alienated through her years as an ER intern and a bout with cancer, her family believes that Ana is meant to be a healer of others, the divine power of caring and touching having been passed on to her with the dying breath of her maternal grandmother.
Ana's mother's escape from the islands was never as complete and irreversible as Ana, in her anger, has grown to believe. In her own way, her mother, Anahola, is driven by the same pride and ambition - she becomes an immunology researcher and an assistant to a world-known scientist. It is the checks she sends that enable Ana to attend college, sustain the family in emergencies, and are always kept secret from Ana herself, for fear that she will rebel and reject everything she's achieved. When Anahola arrives to help Ana through cancer treatment, a new kind of peace must be brokered between mother and daughter, the kind neither one, unrepentant and headstrong, can imagine. Yet this transformation is only the first in the series of many connections which mystically center on Ana and the land of her native island torn and polluted by bomb tests. In the end, she must answer her ancestors' call to action and become more than her individual nature seems to permit.
The Hawaiian world of this book is so confidently imagined, so rich in its detail, that you won't want to leave it. Davenport's writing reminds us, as Ana is reminded, how we take for granted "the light and the rhythms and the motion. The scents and colors, and proportions. The way shadows made plain things interesting, the way space
met in empty corners, creating a place for the eyes to rest." Like Ana, we want "to dwell on these things again. To slow down and understand their `thingness'." Davenport fully possesses the essential skill of a story-teller - to transport her readers entirely into the world of her story and to hold them there by threading their every sense onto an unbroken feeling of wonder.
I only wished that the Russian background of the other protagonist, Nikolai, was written with the same power. Although on the surface his life appears to be drawn with the same gritty, lively detail as that of his Hawaiian
counterparts, Davenport's vivid prose is wasted on utter cliches - constant cold, taiga, wolves running in the streets of cities, people starving and freezing. Replace certain words with "hot", "desert", "sand" and "Kinshasa", and the indiscriminate climatic and material depravity whence Nikolai comes and where he keeps returning would be indistinguishable from the mass-culture stereotype of Africa. It probably won't bother you as much as it bothered me (I grew up in Soviet Union), but let me just tell you that there is no taiga between St.Petersburgh and Moscow (this term is only applied to forests in Siberia, much like savannah not being used to describe grass in Nebraska), Moscow doesn't get "white nights" (it's too far south), and Arkhangelsk is a long-established city (not a penal colony surrounded by ice huts).
Do read this book on a trip to Hawaii, definitely - it will give you a new appreciation of the islands' history and environment - or for your next book club read (a readers' guide and discussion questions are included in this edition). If you read this as a club, get a map of Russia for independent reference.

I can't help but wonder how much of Davenport's description of island pollution and abuse by the military is actually the truth. Living in Hawaii for several years and visiting for many years before, I have never, ever read in any publication of cancer-causing substances on Oahu or any other island.