Hotel Honolulu
A Novel
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A writer turned Hawaiian hotel manager observes the many lives that pass through his rooms in this novel by the author of The Great Railway Bazaar.
A New York Times Notable Book
In this wickedly satiric romp, a down-on-his-luck writer finds escape from his life as the manager of a low-rent hotel a few blocks from the beach in Waikiki. His boss is quick to explain that the Hotel Honolulu is a multistory establishment—and the writer soon discovers just how many stories are contained in its walls.
Honeymooners, vacationers, wanderers, mythomaniacs, soldiers, and families all check in. Like the Canterbury pilgrims, every guest has come in search of something, whether it’s sun, love, happiness, or objects of unnameable longing. And every guest—not to mention the staff, the owner, and the author himself—has a story. By turns hilarious, ribald, tender, and tragic, Hotel Honolulu offers a unique glimpse into the psychological landscape of an American paradise.
“A sun-soaked Decameron.”—Chicago Sun-Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A tinted review in adult Forecasts indicates a book that we believe is of paramount interest to our readers but that hasn't received a starred or boxed review. HOTEL HONOLULUPaul Theroux. Houghton Mifflin, $26 (432p) XScrappy, satiric and frowsily exotic, this loosely constructed novel of debauchery and frustrated ambition in present-day Hawaii debunks the myth of the island as a vacationer's paradise. The episodic narrative is presided over by two protagonists: the unnamed narrator, a has-been writer who leaves the mainland to manage the seedy Hotel Honolulu, and raucous millionaire Buddy Hamstra, the hotel's owner and former manager, who fired himself to give the narrator his job. The narrator is at once amused and moved by Buddy, "a big, blaspheming, doggy-eyed man in drooping shorts," who is as reckless in his personal life as he is in his business dealings. He hires the writer despite his lack of qualifications, and the writer returns the favor in loyalty and affection, acting as witness to Buddy's flamboyant decline. As the hotel's manager, the writer comes to know a succession of downtrodden travelers and Hawaii residents, each more eccentric than the next. Typical are a wealthy lawyer whose amassed fortune does not bring him happiness; a past-her-prime gossip columnist involved in a love triangle with her bisexual son and her son's male lover; and a man who is obsessed with a woman he meets through the personals. Theroux, never one to tread lightly, often portrays native Hawaiians including the writer's wife as simpleminded, craven souls. But he is an equal-opportunity satirist, skewering all his characters except perhaps his alter-ego narrator and Leon Edel, the real-life biographer of Henry James, who makes an extended, unlikely cameo appearance. The lack of conventional plot and the dreariness of life at Hotel Honolulu make the narrative drag at times, but Theroux's ear and eye are as sharp as ever, his prose as clean and supple.
