Fiction: An Audacious Talent
Print
Kaui Hart Hemmings, House of Thieves: Stories
(The Penguin Press, 2005)
The nine short stories in Kaui Hart Hemmings’ debut collection are at once intimate and profound. Readers are dropped into upper-crust Hawaii, a world in which people wound each other—sometimes intentionally and sometimes not—at deep psychological levels. While this is not in and of itself unusual, Hemmings’ characters are largely able to recover their equilibrium. Throughout, each person—whether adult, teenager or child—radiates resilience and the ability to adjust to adversity and betrayal.
In “The Minor Wars,” 10-year-old Scottie and her dad languish at the hospital bedside of Joanie, the child’s comatose mother. Day after day, the pair try—separately and together—to imagine their lives without Joanie’s charismatic presence. As Scottie slowly comes to terms with her mother’s deterioration, she is forced to grapple with the difference between emotional and physical pain. As she does this, readers will literally see her transition from carefree kid to burdened adult. It’s heartbreaking stuff laced with wry humor and keenly—observed detail.
“Final Girl” introduces Emma, the single mother of 13-year-old Keoni. After finding a porn magazine in Keoni’s bedroom, Emma is beside herself. Should she confront him or ignore this sign of incipient manhood? More importantly, how can she instill a hatred of misogyny in him so that he morphs into a caring and respectful man? While Emma wrestles with these questions, her love for her son collides with rage at Keoni’s absent dad. In addition, her thoughts catapult her into a head-on crash with repressed feelings about her own racist father. While he provides the finances that allow Emma and Keoni to live in material comfort, the assistance is not without strings. The layers of the story unravel with remarkable depth and exactitude. What’s more, the denouement leaves readers acutely aware of the compromises that can turn us all into conspirators in our own torment and oppression.
Other stories home in on brother-sister incest; a drug-dealing father’s abandonment of his only daughter; a confused teen’s relationship with her father’s mistress; a son’s realization of parental imperfections; and the multiple ways family members demonstrate their antipathy for one another. Although the collection is not overtly political, Hawaii’s race relations are clearly depicted in interactions between native Hawaiians, white colonizers, and those of mixed heritage.
Regardless of race, however, the people in Hemming’s orbit are marred by insecurity, ineptitude, and and self-involvement. At the same time, House of Thieves depicts these characters’ foibles and missteps with tremendous compassion. Beautifully crafted, wonderfully entertaining, and highly evocative, the collection showcases an audacious talent. In a phrase, it’s a great read.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
New Routes in Fiction: CHRIS POWER with Alec Niedenthal
JUNE 2019 | Fiction
Power’s debut collection—he has worked as a book critic for twenty years—Mothers treats the loss of self and identity in flux. Always powerful but never too neat, the stories in the book often have a neutral tone that belies the complex turns they take. Mothers marks the arrival of a great talent, and you should read it.
The World Without People Who Ruin It and Make It Ugly
by Patricio Pron, translated from the Spanish by Kathleen HeilJUNE 2017 | Fiction
A woman of about forty-two or forty-three often goes for walks in the Schillerwiese, a vast park in a German city. She always takes a small digital camera and spends her time there photographing little girls when they urinate behind trees.
New Routes in Fiction:
ELIZABETH STROUT with Alec Niedenthal
APR 2018 | Fiction
Elizabeth Strout writes fiction that adds and strips away. For every remarkable act of noticing, every tree rustle or bitter wind she gets across, her work hides the profound alienation—self divided from self, parent divided from child—that drives her characters on.
Guestbook: Ghost Stories
by Megan N. LibertyJUNE 2019 | Art Books
These stories fall into the category of more traditional ghost stories, where a poltergeist haunts a place it once lived—or died—in. But what rings most true and fits within the context of Shapton’s larger work (Important Artifacts particularly) are the ghosts not of people but of things.
RSS