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Fiction. Literature. Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a groundbreaking debut novel that folds the legends of Hawai'ian gods into an engrossing family saga; a story of exile and the pursuit of salvation from Kawai Strong Washburn. In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa's family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods?a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family's legacy. When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawai'i?with tragic consequences?they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.… (more)
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Story (3/5): Nainoa falls overboard during a glass bottom boat tour and is miraculously saved by the very sharks that people thought were going to kill him. His family (who is struggling to make ends meet) takes full
The story starts out pretty good but quickly loses focus. We hear from Nainoa, his mother, his brother, and his sister and very occasionally his father. The story very quickly goes from an intriguing tale of magical realism and the abilities Nainoa has gained along with the expectations of how he should use his power, to glimpses on how the focus on Nainoa damaged his siblings. The vast majority of the story is just kind of rambling through Nainoa’s siblings' lives as they try to recover their purpose in life and self-confidence. I was surprised at what happened to Nainoa (but not in a good way) and thought the story pretty much just crashed and burned at that point.
Characters (3/5): I never really engaged with any of these characters much, there’s just too much bouncing around. Nainoa is really kept at a distance from the reader and even the few parts we read from his POV feel very distanced. A lot of the characters in here make a lot of bad decisions over and over. Nainoa’s siblings are wild and his parents are always scraping by. While they come across as very human because of their situations and questionable choices, I didn’t really enjoy reading about any of them. I also don’t really know anyone who lives the way they do and the way this was written made it hard to understand and engage with this lifestyle.
Setting (4/5): I enjoyed the setting of Hawaii’s Big Island, I recently (well a couple years ago) spent a few weeks on the big island and it was definitely a different culture and lifestyle from the rest of the US. This book does a good job capturing that. The author represents the love/hate relationship of the natives/tourists well and captures struggles and cost of living somewhere so remote well too.
Writing Style (3/5): I didn’t love all the bouncing around between different characters that is done here; it felt like it should be three or four separate stories and didn’t flow well. You feel very distanced from everything the whole time. There’s nothing technically wrong with the writing, it’s easy enough to understand and read...the story just doesn’t have much point to it. I also felt like there was some bait and switch here; I expected to read a cool story about magical realism, special powers, and destiny...what I got was “a day in the life of” type of story about a family’s day to day life struggles.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was okay but I found it fairly disappointing. This was not the story I was hoping for or expecting. It starts out really interesting but then completely loses focus and purpose. There are some highlights here; I enjoyed the big island setting and seeing the ramifications of Nainoa’s power and fame. However, there was a lot in here that just served to lengthen the story and push the reader away from the characters. I don’t plan on checking out future books by this author.
When Nainoa is a child, he falls from a tourist boat. He is returned to the vessel by a group of sharks, unharmed. His parents are amazed and from that moment he is viewed differently, as someone special, a situation that amplifies when he discovers in himself the power to heal. His siblings resent being left in his shadow, and less than understanding when he explains the pressure he feels. But all three excel in different ways, each ending up on the mainland at university, Nainoa graduating early from Stanford, and working as a paramedic as he waits to begin medical school, Dean on a basketball scholarship in Spokane and Kaui, the youngest, studying engineering in San Diego. What might read as an American success story in lesser hands becomes something more thoughtful as each member of the family struggles in a world where they are alone and without a support system.
What a wonderful surprise this debut novel was! Yes, there's a bit of folklorish magic in there, but at heart this is the story of a family. One that struggles to get by in a place where jobs are scarce and low-paying, where the kids are fully aware of their circumstances. One in which one child is favored, putting enormous pressure on him and harming the bond between the siblings as the other two fight to be appreciated. And along with a pitch-perfect look at family dynamics, there's a gorgeous, complicated description of life in Hawai'i and how Hawaiians feel when they move to the mainland. The writing is very, very good and this does not feel like a debut novel at all.
So overall, I liked
"I feel the breath of life in the valley." Man, I really need to the islands...
Sharks is a totally stunning stylistic fully-formed debut novel from Kawai Strong Washburn. It is all at once heartwarming and heartbreaking and realistic take on family. It explores grief and family functionality and dysfunctionality and it all just vibrates off of
Kawai Strong Washburn's debut is beautifully written lyrical prose that also captures the tone and language of the Hawaiian islands. For those unfamiliar the audio-book is a wonderful way to tap into the poetic use of language.
The Flores family- working class Hawaiians, struggling to make an income, experience
Meanwhile the other two siblings- basketball star, Dean and science student Kaui, feel sidelined.. As the kids are all in different locations on mainland USA, pursuing their callings, and the parents continue to scrape a living on the islands, a cataclysmic event will affect all their lives..
Written in short chapters from each of the five family members, I completely believed in each of them. Unutterably beautiful, magical and fabulous.
This book is very well written: lyrical and lush prose, every chapter told from the
Nainoa, with his eventful conception, his childhood rescue from drowning BY sharks, and his magical abilities, is the center of the story, but at the same time, it’s not really about just him. We spend a lot of time in the heads of his mother Malia, brother Dean, and sister Kauwi.
This is the story of a poor Hawaiian family. It’s the story of imperfect parents trying to do their best for their children, and those children trying to navigate their own way in life. It’s Nainoa trying to understand the purpose of his gift, and his siblings trying to understand where they fit in relation to their special brother. It’s a story rich in descriptions of Hawai’i and legends of the gods of the island. The magical realism is perfectly done, and the touches of magic actually serve to make the rest of the story seem all the more real. Sharks in the Time of Saviors isn’t a happy, feel-good story, but it still left me hopeful and made me smile more than once.
Kawai Strong Washburn has written a very powerful debut. I’m endlessly impressed with his storytelling, especially how he was able to write such a believable female character in Malia. I sometimes struggle with the way male authors write a woman’s POV, but not here.
It seems wrong to say that I ‘enjoyed’ such an extremely depressing book, but here we are: I loved this book.
A tremendously good book with an unfortunately awful title. Synopses will tell you it is about a boy who is magically rescued by sharks
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.
So good character development of the Flores family. The plot is interesting. Noah has special powers because of the Night Marchers that were around when his parents conceived him. These are noticed when he
All three children head from Hawaii to the mainland for college and it doesn’t go well for them. When Nao tries to find himself, tragedy ensues and the dysfunctional family tries to work through it. It doesn’t go well for any of them. But there is closure in the end. I just don’t quite understand what it is.
Each chapter of the novel is written from the pov of one of the main characters, which adds another interesting dynamic.
This book reminds me a lot of local author Chris McKinney's The Tattoo which is worth grabbing sometime if this slice of Hawaii is something you want more of. It has no magical realism to speak of, just real realism :)
Quote Roundup:
P. 180: If a god is a thing that has absolute power over us, then in this world there are many. There are gods that we choose and gods that we can't avoid; there are gods that we pray and gods that prey on us;to there are dreams that become gods and pasts that become gods and nightmares that do, as well. As I age I learn that there are more gods than I'll ever know, and yet I have to watch for all of them, or else they can use me or I can lose them without even realizing it. Take money... Take language... Take you, my son.
P. 348: "Whenever I've made a choice in my life, a real choice... I can always feel the change, after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach. ... I'm always losing better versions of myself. I don't know. You just have to keep trying."
This family saga focuses on a native Hawaiian/Filipino family with 3 children. They leave the big island for Oahu when the sugarcane industry collapses, and take jobs in the tourist industry--while their extended families are
I thought he audio for this (with 4 narrators) was quite good, with very different voices that all sound Hawaiian, with various amounts of accent. The "magical realism" parts of the story I did not love--they were fine, and it worked well with the 3 kids' need to be home--but it just isn't really my kind of thing.
That said, I have already recommended this to a friend from Hawaii. I don't know if she will like it, but I suspect some of the Hawaii-specific background here went right by me. I do see why people love this book, it's just not really my kind of thing.
The other theme of the book was that of sibling dynamics where one child is special (whether gifted or handicapped), and favoured, and just takes up more space in the family, leaving the siblings struggling to find their place. This dynamic was excellently portrayed in the book.
Strong, strong writing and fascinating characters. And, at the end, some characters have found their way back; they are healed by their return to the land and to their culture. One will get there, I think. And one remains lost.
p.s. I don't like magical realism or mysticism as a rule, but it is well handled and work in this book.
The author can write, but up until this book it had been short stories. This is his first novel and the book is easily 150 pages too long.
The story basically ends half way through and even worse, like a lot of short stories, it has no ending.
Hopefully his next book will be an