Customer Reviews

Song of the Exile

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

To Kiana Davenport's credit, she didn't try to recreate her former book "Shark Dialogues" and moved on instead to break new ground.

The story starts during a time of innocence for Hawaii, shortly before WW2 and extends through the time of statehood in the 1950s. This is more than just the story of Hawaii, however. It is the story of a native Hawaiian jazz musician, Keo, who travels to New Orleans, Paris and then Shanghai, and finds himself in a brutal Japanese prison during the war. It is also the story of Sunny, his Korean-Hawaiian girlfriend, who finds herself a Japanese "comfort woman".

The author doesn't spare the reader the horrors of the war. Her searing words shed light on this dark time in history with an intensity that made me shudder with its graphic violence and unremitting horrors. Over and over the reader experiences the starvation, disease, pain and physical and mental deterioration of people who are forced to live in unspeakable conditions where human endurance under such circumstances is tested to the limit.

Woven throughout the plot is the story of their families, life in Hawaii, and the spirituality of the Hawaiian people. The reader also feels the cadence of Hawaii and the magic in her words as she describes Keo's music.

I would have liked this book to be lighter. I would have liked to smile rather than cringe at the unrelenting horror. I would have liked a happier ending. But that is not the story that the author wanted to tell. And so I accept it on its own terms. And, if nothing else, it makes me appreciate the good life I have.

I recommend this book but be forewarned. It will haunt your dreams and inspire nightmares.

I will not recount the story; the other reviewers do it, and for my money, the story is marvelous. Like so many, I did not want this book to end, and rationed reading it for that reason. I cannot think of any other writer I have ever read who can capture in concrete, substantial, palpable images abstractions like jazz, or pain, or love, or wistfulness. The visuals her words sculpt are staggering. Hardly essential to an appreciation of this magnificent work, if you have lived in Hawaii, ever had an appreciation of either or both of its indigenous and diverse cultures, been entranced by music, felt the power and mystery of natural things, it will resonate with you on innumerable levels. You will learn a fair amount of Hawaiian along the way if you care to, and you should, as it is a beautiful and evocative and incredibly musical language. The book is more than poetry--it is, in many ways, a great mele. It speaks of essences, of life's value, its challenges, its losses, its pain. There are parts as profound and compact in that as any philosophy one could want (the small chapterlet recounting Malia's last visit with Pono may be the best piece of writing in that regard I have ever read). The political material through the book is, if you read closely, not polemical, but balanced if with a clear but hardly simplistic preference. And on a societal level, it is a magnificent paean to the power of women, especially their power over men, wanted or not, and the consequences, marvelous and horrific, of that power. If you are a woman, or you truly love them as I do, you will hold this book fiercely to your heart. Those who say Ms. Davenport embraced too much in too complex a way--with which I totally disagree--would probably say the same of Thomas Wolfe, whose prose at times hers resembles, several of whose works I number among my favorites in the language. I would rate this book higher than any I have reviewed on Amazon to date, and among the best novels I have ever read--and I have read thousands.

There are not many books that move me to tears, but this one did. Several days after finishing this book, I am still affected by it. It is basically a love story about two people born in the Hawaiin islands. The man (Keo) is destined to become a great jazz player, and he falls in love with a Korean-Hawaiin woman (Sunny) who is haunted by her own issues. They end up going to Europe to pursue Keo's jazz career and end up parting as Sunny begins a search for her long-lost sister. When she leaves, she does it without actually telling Keo she is going. He finds out by waking up and finding her gone with a note. Keo begins his life-long search for his one true love. But unbelievably they both end up as captives during World War II. But life does go on after that, and they are both released from a hell you would not believe. I do not want to give too much away but there is much joy and sadness in this book. Just look at the cover. See how hauntingly beautiful Sunny is and read her and Keo's story.

The most promising and interesting theme of this novel is the undaunted spirit of the Hawaiian people. Through the eyes of one particular family, the time frame is the 1930's through World War II, devastating the closely-knit community, many native Hawaiian sons lost in combat. The story moves back and forth: from Hawaii to the New Orleans jazz scene, Shanghai to Paris, and back. In the course of events, one heartbreaking message is the truly ignoble and inhumane use of euphemistically named "comfort women" by Japanese soldiers. These innocent women were harvested from city streets and villages to service their captors, their tragic borderline existence only recently widely discussed and documented for readers. Released after the war, their original numbers decimated, they became "ghost women", emaciated and most permanently physically and psychologically damaged.

The central theme, however, is the displaced love of Keo and Sunny. A gifted musician, Keo follows his muse and Sunny becomes his most ardent and loyal fan. As Keo disappears into his music, he barely remarks Sunny's search for her own affirmation in the search for her long-lost sister. Tragically parted by the war, Keo and Sunny endure years of separation as each is subjected to horrendous experiences as Japanese captives, each clinging to the memory of the other. But I had no clear sense of Sunny's personality from the beginning of her reciprocated attraction to Keo. Later, when Keo is agonizing over her whereabouts, a more particular sense of what he so desperately misses, other than adoration, would have helped me appreciate Sunny's qualities. The story changes locations frequently, and I found myself wanting more details of Keo's family and their ongoing struggles, how their ties to one another sustain them through loss and separation. I suspect the most potent material rests within the heart of this family.

Some editorial cuts may have better centered the story. Perhaps Davenport is intending to illustrate the rambling nature of Keo's search, his frustration and overwhelming loneliness, but I feel the novel loses its original vital focus. There are some hectoring passages at the end of the book on the issue of statehood, but my sympathies were already engaged. While certainly an entertaining and informative read, the novel would resonate more fully with fewer geographic leaps and already acknowledged social injustices added to the forum. An emphasis on the love story and tragic circumstances surrounding the lovers, especially the atrocity of "comfort women", was certainly sufficient to hold my interest.

Unlike many other readers, I am not reading this book because of any interest in Hawaii, or even in World War II. It was a Christmas gift to me from someone who heard the author on the radio, but hadn't read the book herself. When I first looked at it, I thought, "This is not something I want to read!" It is full of graphic violence and horror. However, as I read on, I was mesmerized by the writing itself. Because the book is too heavy for my daily commute, it's taking me a very long time to read, and I find that I'm actually trying to make it last longer. I've never come across any writing about music (and it's not just jazz) to compare with Davenport's. I would say to anyone who's afraid to read the book because of the terrible images of suffering: The writing is so beautiful and intense that reading it is a joyful experience in itself. (What's really depressing to me is something that's badly or slickly written.)

I first became acquainted with Kiana Davenport's work with "Shark Dialouges". The writing and imagery took me back to in time to when I was a little girl, sitting in my grandmother's kitchen in Makakilo, listen to her and my aunties "talk story" as they cooked, laughed and remembered. I loved that book, but I have to say I loved "Song of the Exile" even more.

Kiana has managed to do what I have never seen before and what I wish that I could do: present the Hawaiian experience to a mainstream audience not as the "aloha-sterotype" that many people have, but life as it really is, with all of its struggles and its everyday conversations and rhythms. I only wish that her work would receive the recognition that it deserves. It truly is "He wahî pa`akai" ("Just a packet of salt"), an old Hawaiian saying that proves that gifts made by the giver are the best ones of all.

I heard of this book from a friend living in Hawaii who highly recommended it. Although I rarely read fiction, this book left me breathless and wanting to read more of Davenport's work. Each sentence is so well crafted, I could not put the book down, and often dreampt of leaving work early to go home and race through it. As I was pulled into the lives of the characters, I found myself constantly amazed at Davenport's poetic prose. I am recommending this book to all my friends and family.

I am not quite through this magnificent novel as I write this, and in fact am reluctant to reach the end, for it is a marvelous story, rich in imagery, vivid (very) in tales, and it reads like sensitive poetry. Any true fan of Hawaiiana should love this book.

A view of the chaotic world of the native Hawaiian during the horrible period of the Second World War.While the primary theme is the atrocities inflicted on the "comfort girls", it carries the message of the author's love of Hawaii and its native people. Very carefully researched and almost poetic in portions. The love of jazz music is perhaps dealt with to an extreme,yet presents an educational tertiary theme. Highly recommended!

If all you are looking for is a good love story, set in unusual places, with well-drawn characters, you will love this book. If you are looking for a book that contains fully integrated themes, a controlling idea, and a sense that the author has shaped and limited her subject matter, you may be as disappointed as I was.

There is no doubt that Kiana Davenport is prodigiously talented with the ability to describe ineffable beauty and horrific ugliness, to use vivid verbs better than most other writers, to create characters the reader cares about, and to keep her various narratives moving along smoothly. Unfortunately, she also gave this reader, at least, the feeling that she was also "pushing buttons," calling up subjects and images that the reader may already be well familiar with in order to add to the emotional impact of her story--Hitler's treatment of gypsies and people of color, Japanese atrocities against comfort women, the excitement of the early jazz scene in New Orleans, the plight of the women left behind during a war, injustices against Hawaiians.

Her additional resentment against Americans that she feels have spoiled the "paradise" of the native Hawaiians--the earliest missionaries, the sugar barons, and even those who argued for statehood--is palpable, and the political speeches near the end of the book sound more like newspaper reports used in a term paper than part of a narrative whole. In short, a story that starts in Hawaii, moves to New Orleans, to Paris during World War II, to Shanghai, to Japanese prison camps, and ultimately back to Hawaii during the push for statehood, is a story of such enormous scope that this reader, at least, wished the author had limited her material more effectively and concentrated on developing relationships more fully. The theme of prejudice against Hawaiians, however realistic it may be, is just not enough to bridge the enormous spatial dislocations of the narrative and keep the reader enthralled with her characters.