The Descendants

Set in Hawaii, this novel is a nuanced portrait of a family in distress. There’s Matt, the father who long ago checked out on his family. He’s forced to start parenting again when an accident puts his wife Joanie in a coma. He is left to reconnect with his two daughters, the troubled teen Alex, and 10-year-old Scotty who is growing up too fast, as they come to terms with Joanie’s situation.

Along the way he discovers Joanie might have been having an affair and quickly his grief becomes twisted with bitterness and confusion. He begins to question the decisions he has made over the past few years. Like most families, they are dysfunctional, yet they truly love each other.

The character of Joni is fascinating because we see her only show more through memories and her husband and daughter’s points of view. We never hear why she made the decisions she did, which doesn’t take anything away from the story, but it leaves us feeling as frustrated as Matt is.

This was one of the rare cases when I saw the movie first, but I’m still glad I went back and read the book. The movie version is excellent, but the book adds even more depth because we can hear Matt’s internal monologue and struggle as he tries to reconnect with his daughters and come to terms with his relationship with his wife.

BOTTOM LINE: I was surprised by how much I loved this book. Even though the two teenage daughters were annoying at times, it was necessary for the dynamic of the story. It was a great study in grief and love and all the confusing emotions in between.

“That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.”

“Get used to it. She'll be there for the rest of your life. She'll be there on birthdays, at Christmastime, when you get your period, when you graduate, have sex, when you marry, have children, when you die. She'll be there and she won't be there.” show less

Yes, I read this because Alexander Payne made a movie. But wow, so glad I did. I have read many books over the years that have a first-person narrator who is wigging out with anxiety over problems, real and perceived. Most of those narrators I have wanted to slap. The whining, the angst, the self-indulgence just rankles me (maybe because it hits so close to home). But Hemmings' Matt King has the perfect narrative voice. He has REAL problems and earns every second of his emotional turmoil. I also love that the plot is utterly believable. Things don't necessarily turn out as you might expect, but it's done so right, and the characters roll with the punches well enough that you absolutely have to go with them. Supporting characters, show more setting, thematic elements, all good, good, good. Even incidents that in other writers' hands might play as cheap gags felt to me like moments of "yeah, crud like that happens, doesn't it." She just gets it right. I hope my library has more of her books. Hemmings has earned my continued interest. -cg show less

I have always had a soft spot for books written by women from the point of view of a male character. I find them endearing. Men writing as women can often be a little unconvincing, with lots of lines like, ‘I jogged up the steps, my breasts bouncing lightly under my summery blouse’, or, ‘Suddenly, my period started.’ Women writing as men do not make these sorts of mistakes; you don't get things like, ‘I marched into the bathroom and urinated fiercely, remaining standing throughout,’ although I half-suspect that Grey by EL James is full of that kind of thing. But it's easier for them isn't it – thanks to the historical preponderance of male writers, women have plenty of exposure to how men think, whereas many men still find show more women a total mystery.

Why am I talking about this. I don't know. The Descendants does have a male narrator, a convincing one, though that is not the most interesting thing about the way the story's told. An expansion of one of Hemmings's earlier short stories, the novel is a bittersweet family drama played out in Hawai‘i, about a father trying to reestablish his relationship with his daughters after their mother is hospitalised. Still, the choice of narrator is an interesting decision, since the more conventional way to tell this story, perhaps, would have been to make it a classic coming-of-age tale from the point of view of one of the girls.

The tone is set by the admirably opinionated opening line:

The sun is shining, mynah birds are chattering, palm trees are swaying, so what.

Not all of the prose that follows is quite so sparky, though. As is often the case with books that try to reproduce the ‘numb’ feeling of dealing with a tragedy, the results can feel a little flat, and this isn't helped by the present-tense narration – not a technique that I dislike on principle, but here it somehow reinforces a sense that we are meandering through the day-to-day banalities as they happen, rather than looking back on the selected highlights of a story.

The daughters are extremely well drawn – one young and not fully aware of what's happening, the other teenaged and hormonal, both observed coolly by a father who loves them but who has never really got to know them. Looming lushly behind our cast are the Hawaiian islands, here richly contextualised: they are seen on the one hand as the product of a very specific imperialist history – our protagonist traces his family back to Hawaiian royalty and to the American sugar magnates that overthrew them, a descent on which, as the title suggests, much of the plot turns – and, on the other hand, as a modern retirement home for all the wealthy baby-boomers whose children are growing up in an unearned paradise:

I wonder if our offspring have all decided to give up. They'll never be senators or owners of a football team; they'll never be the West Coast president of NBC, the founder of Weight Watchers, the inventor of shopping carts, a prisoner of war, the number one supplier of the world's macadamia nuts. No, they'll do coke and smoke pot and take creative writing classes and laugh at us.

A dig at herself, perhaps: her prose certainly shows all the hallmarks of a creative writing graduate, inoffensive and thoughtful, concerned with parents and infidelity and daily frustrations. But it's intelligently done and I enjoyed it.

Right, that's the review done. Now I'm off to urinate fiercely, remaining standing throughout. show less

I loved this book. If you are married, or were married, or want to be married, or are a human being who has had relationships with other human beings, I have to think this book will speak to you. Matt King has a wife in a coma due to an accident, and two daughters he doesn't know much about. As it turns out, he may not know that much about his wife, either. But when it comes right down to it - when there's no more time to try again or do things over, does it really matter what faults the person you loved had? What faults you had?

Every character seems real. They're all flawed - sometimes capable of the very best, sometimes just petty and selfish. Sometimes they do the right things for the wrong reasons and vice versa. I am a little show more curious how authentic men think the male narrator's voice was. I'm asking my husband to read it and hope to get some feedback from him on that topic. show less

This got a reverent review from a social media I'm on. That person's review is accurate, but the tone and emotion are wrong for a book like this. Yes, we read the same book. We both had completely different opinions on it. This is a novel that does a lot with something that could have been humdrum. I appreciated that the author was able to do the opposite. As unlikeable as everyone was, the writing was oddly absorbing. The book made its point and kept making it, but the characters put that forth easily. I forgave it. This is a story told through an intensely unlikeable narrator who has no idea how to be a parent and is insufferable in his own right. Everyone in this book ranges from harmfully irritating to outright toxic. I got the show more chills while reading a few times. Most alarming was the little girl. Ew ew ew, and nothing is done to help her. No, her dad just whines and doesn't understand why his racist caricature of a nanny won't fix his kid within the next five minutes. Was I supposed to laugh at the world weary seventeen-year-old's stoner boyfriend? He didn't even make me smile, just confused me. The two stars of my rating are for the lovely descriptions of Hawai'i and the dynamics there being explained and woven in.
I have no idea who I'd recommend this book to, even if I did like it. show less

Matt King, descendant of Hawaiian royalty and landholder extradinaire, is forced to come to terms with his wife's death after she has been lying in a coma. Adding to the problem, he's also discovered that his wife has been unfaithful and he's trying to dispose of his family landholdings and re-establish a connection with his two daughters all at once. As Matt sets out with his two daughters (and his daughter's "boyfriend" Sid) on a quest to inform his wife's lover of her imminent death, so that even he can say his goodbyes...readers get to watch as Matt addresses the shortcomings of his marriage, grows to love and appreciate his daughters in fits and starts, and finally make the "right" decision about what to do with the last remaing show more land in Hawaii still owned by people of Hawaiian descent.

A really interesting book. Matt and his kids are wildly unlovable but Hemmings brings them into focus and makes you care about them. Sid is a fantastic character - at once not belonging in this family driven story and also serving to cut through all the family's crap even if he can't seem to cut through his own. Watching Matt turn from this very self-centered character into someone who wants desperately to give his daughters the love they have been missing, do "right" by his wife's lover and by his responsibility to his descendants in deciding what to do with his land holdings, and even helping Sid to work out the problems in his life is a great experience. An entertaining book with very real damaged (but not heartbreakingly so) characters and a rewarding finish. show less

The ending dragged, and coincidences and implausible situations abound. However, I found it easy to just go along with it for the most part, with the exception of a few elements of the ending i.e. Sid's role by the end of the book falls into deux ex machina territory. How convenient, to take the one unpleasant task right off of Matt's hands with a phone call to Brian Speer's wife so she can show up in the hospital as a foil to Matt's saintliness --- "saintliness" might be a little extreme, but her scene in Joanie's room I found a touch too manipulative. Although, I suppose it could fit in a remote, implied way with the book's presentation of how adults, even in their legitimate grief/pain, hurt/can potentially hurt their children.

But. show more The novel is very, very funny without being cartoonish, with varying degrees of excellent sting, like, everywhere, of all types. "He didn't love you. I love you." Man. I appreciated the portrayal of the kids --- even Sid, until he swoops in to meddle in a way that I don't think was very true to his character --- who are recognizably unfathomable to sometimes horrifying; again, without being cartoonish.

(And, I found it slightly more affecting than Alexander Payne's movie. But the movie was decent. And, hey, there's Kaui Hart Hemmings with a cameo as Matt King's secretary!) show less