Talking to the Dead - Hardcover

Watanabe, Sylvia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385418876 ISBN 13: 9780385418874

Publisher: Doubleday, 1992

Synopsis

Stories reveal life on the Lahaina coast of Hawaii before the region was hit by development, as Aunty Talking to the Dead passes on her skills to an apprentice, two little girls anticipate being grown up, and an only son tries to choose between Canada, Vietnam, and a young woman called Lulu

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Reviews

Although some of these 10 interrelated stories told by residents of a Hawaiian community linger in the memory, others soon evaporate. Watanabe's spare prose focuses on extended families and on events suffused with spirituality. Noteworthy stories include "Anchorage," in which a young woman hesitates to leave her father, a former artist afficted with Alzheimer's disease, for school in Alaska; and the O. Henry Award-winning title story, about an elderly mystic who conducts funeral rites and her squeamish but dedicated young apprentice. Occasional references to the sea, lava and the La Hula Rhumba Bar and Grill remind us that the action occurs in exotic Hawaiian settings. Primarily, however, Watanabe directs her attention to conflicts between characters--domineering parents, rebellious kids, local eccentrics--who could be at home in any small town. Her debut collection offers tales that are alternately engaging and listless.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A first collection of interconnected stories set in the coastal village of Luhi, on the island of Maui, by a Japanese- American born and raised in Hawaii. Point of view alternates gracefully among villagers of different age, sex, and race-- Japanese, Chinese, Caucasian, Hawaiian and bapa, or mixed. In the O. Henry-winning title story, a young Japanese woman, weak of stomach, insists upon apprenticing herself to Auntie Talking to the Dead, a kahuna who prepares bodies for burial, because ``...it was she who understood the wholeness of things--the significance of directions and colors.'' A prevailing theme here is the conflict between the ``wholeness'' of traditional lifestyle and so-called progress. In the powerful ``The Caves of Okinawa,'' a Japanese-American WW II veteran tries to give his son, on leave from Vietnam, a ticket to Canada but is thwarted by his wife, who, though she, too, lives for their son, cannot face the dishonor of desertion. The father's war trauma involved his participation in the dynamiting of caves in which Japanese soldiers and villagers hid. Then, in ``A Spell of Kona Weather,'' we learn that the son has been killed in Vietnam. ``Spell'' seems incomplete, however; and, similarly, ``Certainty''--in which a young pregnant woman learns from her elderly mother what really happened the day her father left--seems at once too obvious and troubled by half-raised questions. ``A Summer Waltz,'' two children playing dress-up, is no more than a fragment; but fully realized pieces include the lovely ``Anchorage'' (a daughter and her grandmother fight a losing battle against Alzheimer's in her father), and ``The Prayer Lady'' (an old man wants to leave with his dead son on the night of the bon dance, when the Japanese send the dead spirits back to the sea). With her unearthing of the heartbreak that lies beneath Hawaii's sunny landscape, Watanabe makes an uneven but promising debut. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Watanabe's collection of related short stories of life in a Hawaiian village before the massive development brought on by tourism carries on a tradition in Asian American literature propagated initially by Maxine Hong Kingston ( Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book , LJ 4/1/89) called talk stories. The stories are filled with eccentric--some would say, extraordinary--characters like the Little Grandma in "Anchorage" who turns her son's descent into old age and kleptomania into beautiful quilts. They are propelled by strange turns of events, as in the story of the mother who slips excerpts from the Diamond Sutra written on rice paper into her husband's evening meal in order to safeguard their son, an enlisted man in Vietnam, while the husband has already made plans for the son to escape to Canada. The best stories in the collection, however, are not those inhabited by strange and wondrous characters and events but quiet ones such as "Certainty," in which ordinary people suffer through life's many disappointments like the inevitable breakup of a marriage due to lack of communication. Recommended for all serious fiction collections.
- Cherry W. Li, Dickinson Coll. Lib., Carlisle, Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385418876
• ISBN 13: 9780385418874
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 127