Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn

“The kingdom of Hawai’i had long been broken – the breathing rain forests and singing green reefs crushed under the haole fists of beach resorts and skyscrapers…”

A tremendously good book with an unfortunately awful title. Synopses will tell you it is about a boy who is magically rescued by sharks and goes on to have supernatural powers, and you might wonder why you should read a silly fantasy tale like that (with an awful title to boot). But this is really the story of a Hawaiian family with deep, magically realistic ties to the earth; as well as the story of a modern family going to shambles.

I went to the Big Island of Hawaii once and it had a life-altering effect on my spiritual attitude, i.e. it gave me one. I think it was at the point that a guide told us that the lava flows were “Pele’s hair.” We all hear about nature-worshipping religions and the Gaia theory, but only in Hawaii did I feel it literally. No, that particular lava flow really IS Pele’s hair. So they don’t want you to take a pickax to it, to my husband’s disappointment. (It’s gotta be a lot easier to adhere to a religion like that in a place with no winter. In Vermont, one feels bereft; god is literally dormant for so long.)

This book brought it all to life. “Fire goddess Pele with her unyielding strength, birthing the land again and again in lava, exhaling her sulfur breath across the sky…”

The family suffers from poverty, must leave the Big Island for jobs in the cities in Oahu. The parents work hard to send their children to colleges on the mainland. The one who is blessed with healing powers, Noa, becomes a paramedic. The eldest, Dean, becomes for a short time a basketball star; and the youngest, Kaui, goes to school for engineering. But always, the poverty:

“My grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother had no use for paper printed with the silhouette of some faraway haole man. It gave nothing. What was needed was food from the earth, housing from the earth, medicine from the earth… But ships from far ports carried a new god in their bellies… And money was the name of that god, and it was the sort of god that preyed on you, made demands and laid its hands on you with such force as to make the Old Testament piss its pants.”

In the end, it is not giving too much away to note that it seems significant that Kaui’s job pays her not in money but in food from the earth. But I did not like how Dean ended up; and I don’t know the significance of the fact that what he provided for the family was money. ( )

Addendum: I own this in physical form and will loan.

Black Is the Body by Emily Bernard

For book club. Local professor of black studies writes observational essays. I liked the shout-outs to Vermont, at first. It gradually became clear though that she does not feel at home here, and I started to feel judged. As an adoptee, I also enjoyed the segments about adopting her twins. Other than that, it was hard to feel interested. ( )

Bending Reality by Bernice Kelman

Really Chris?  You read a book mostly dictated by an energy force calling himself “Sir Garrod”?

Well, a lot of it, yes, I did.

Because it was given to me by my neighbor, the author, Bernice, with whom I’ve lately set up a weekly grocery shopping date.

And at least half of it, I skimmed or skipped.  Not of interest.  And yet… the underlying message is nothing wacky, nothing hard to get behind, nothing more simple than… love.

And I like that she – or, she would correct me, he/she/it, Sir Garrod – supports the theory of parallel universes, a favorite of mine.  To wit:
“Consider that this is a central path and that as you move along this path, every time you come to a decision-making point, you are at a crossroad where you create alternate versions of yourself that each explore a different decision.”

There is stuff in physics that suggests that indeed every ‘decision’ made by a quantum particle simultaneously goes both one way and the other, forking off an infinite number of universes.  So you see, scientific basis!

Seriously, it’s just a vision I like… it gives me a calm feeling to envision the dominoes of the universe all hitting each other, my path just being one path of dominoes among infinitely many.  Maybe this is what “belief” is, or spirituality, or somesuch.  Do I “believe” this?  What does “believe” mean?  That word has always rubbed me the wrong way because in practice it always seems to mean, “I aver this is true even without evidence.”  If you had evidence, you wouldn’t say “I believe…” you’d just say the fact that’s true.

All I can say about my parallel universe theory is that it could be true and I like to think about it.  Whatever that makes me – spiritual, wack – is what I am, so whatever.

But this is my own sidetrack, and not the central message of the book.  The central message is what Jesus was trying and failing to get us to do from the beginning: love one another.  Just love.

Gives me a warm rosy glow when I’m tipsy just before bed, but so hard to do in the glare of the morning.

Biloxi

I really enjoyed this. The protagonist is a 60-something-year-old male recently retired and divorced. He spends his time in his char, drinking beers, watching bad TV, eating horribly unhealthy foods by the sackful, and avoiding people. He dislikes his ex-brother-in-law who insists on visiting him, and seriously considers changing his phone number to avoid his daughter. His life turns around when he impulsively adopts a dog. I just really loved this story. ( )

PS  I own it physically and am willing to lend.