The first month of the year is only half over and already I’m
behind.
One of my lifestyle resolutions—less clutter!—led to the
effort to weed out as many extraneous volumes around here as I could. Extraneous
as in: old, worn, not so good copies that need not be held onto forevermore, and
as in: spanking newish-looking editions that I’ll probably never read. Into the
gaping chasm between the two fell books I’ve had around, meaning to read but
not to keep. Which means I should try to blaze a trail through those suckers
and chuck’em.
Such reasoning led me to read The Descendants by Kaui Hart
Hemmings because I picked it up some time ago due to my enjoyment of the 2011 film based on it, directed by Alexander Payne and starring George Clooney in
what may be the best “normal guy” role he’s ever done. Also particularly good
in the film is the part of his daughter, Alex, played by Shailene Woodley, and
his father-in-law, played by Robert Forster. Watching the film, which glosses
over rather swiftly the Hawaiian antecedents so important to the fortune Matt
King (Clooney) and his numerous cousins enjoy, I felt for certain the novel
would give much more background and flesh out what must be interesting cultural
heritage. Well, it doesn’t. What the novel does, mostly, is exactly what the
film does so well: delineates the perspective of Matt as he deals with his
comatose wife’s impending death, and her recent infidelity, and tries to move
from “backup parent” to main parent with his two daughters. What Hemmings is
very good at is rendering a variety of teenage savvy that Woodley enacts so
well in the film, and a variety of middle-schooler cluelessness and arch
innocence that falls to the younger daughter, Scottie (Amara Miller, also very
good, and more soulful perhaps than the character in the book). The screenplay
improves on a few minor points, and Beau Bridges is on hand in the film to
flesh out one of the cousins in a memorable fashion. All in all, a quick,
breezy read, with questions about family life—both its carnage and in its bonds—explored
with a sense of how uneasy it makes us to brush against the unspoken things.
Still, a sense of place comes through much more strongly in the film than in
the book and that was contrary to my expectation.
Admittedly, not a very demanding book for my first read of
2015, but at least that one’s off my shelves quickly.
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