Welcome to the Hotel Honolulu, a down-at-the-heels
tourist place on a back street two blocks from the
beach at Waikiki, where middle America stays and
dreams. Like the Canterbury pilgrims, every guest in
this eighty-room hotel has come in search of
something— sun, love, happiness, un-namable longing—
and everyone has a story. Honeymooners, vacationers,
wanderers, mythomaniacs, soldiers, and families all
land at the Hotel Honolulu. But the hotel is as
suited to being a crime scene as a love nest.
Fortunately, our keen-eyed narrator , a writer down
on his luck, is there to relate all the comings and
goings. He’s lost money, friends, house, and family,
and he has no experience running a hotel. But all
that doesn’t stop Buddy, the boozy owner of the
place— the last of a dying breed— from signing him
on as manager. It isn’t long before the hotel
expands to encompass the narrator’s whole universe.
His original plan of escape from a life of the mind
becomes something altogether different: a way to
return to the world he left, the world of imagined
life.
No one but Paul Theroux could write this romp of
a book, with its acutely drawn characters and canny
insights into a place that is often viewed as a
simple island paradise. In this unforgettable novel,
Theroux shows us a funny languid floating world,
island style. This is the essence of Hawaii as it
has never been depicted, and it is also the heart of
America. |
