Lyrical and aching in all the right measures, a finely crafted piece of work distilled to its essence.
A strikingly elegant family history, shot through with a poet's appreciation of Hawaiian geology.
Done out of his inheritance by a ruthless stepmother, the author's father moved the family from Hawaii to Los Angeles in the early 1950s. It was a jarring dislocation, made still more unreal when Hongo's parents chose to shroud their Hawaiian days, and many family members, in secrecy. As a mainlander teaching poetry to college students, Hongo (The River of Heaven) felt the pull of Hawaii and the need to do some digging in the family archives. He and his wife and child take up residence in Volcano, Hawaii, where the Hongo Store once served the locals. Reacquainting himself with the island, the author takes long walks afield and is smitten by the volcanic landscape, a patch of living incandescence: "I was spellbound out there, suddenly in a world strangified...a kind of silvery ocean on whose waters I could walk.'' Relatives are met—some confrontationally—and Hongo pumps them for his family's history. Stories emerge, and he turns them lovingly in his storyteller's hand, catching their drift and finding their dignity (or lack thereof). Meeting the dastardly stepmother is a great moment, and so too is the tale of the marine, the shop clerk, and the grocer's revenge. The poet's own progress, riddled with fits and starts, gets special, and raw, consideration. Through it all, Hongo quests for "that governing story of a familial past,'' one that may explain his family's detachment and his own dispirit. He finds instead a "beauty in belonging to this earth and to its past, even one locked in mystery and prohibition, unstoried.''
Lyrical and aching in all the right measures, a finely crafted piece of work distilled to its essence.Pub Date: May 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-57167-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Lionel Dahmer, father of mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, here writes one of the most courageous, unsensational books ever written about serial murder. It does not even summarize Jeffrey's crimes. Dahmer takes upon himself much of the guilt for his son's acts by considering a genetic predisposition to murder he may have passed on to his son; various acts of his own moral blindness that may have contributed to his son's deprived emotional being; and things he did and didn't do when certain symptoms appeared that might have alerted him to Jeffrey's lust for sexual atrocity. What parts of the father, the book asks, are replicated in the son? Largely, Jeffrey is a failure whose failings were earlier those of his father, though the father overcame each failing as its pain grew. Intellectually and physically inferior as a child, Lionel was tutored by his parents from first grade on, and by dint of hard study earned a doctorate in chemistry. A puny child, he took up body-building as a teenager and turned himself into a fine physical specimen. But he also had murderous dreams from which he would awake trembling. Jeffrey's mother was also a depressive, and her excessive pill-taking during pregnancy may well have damaged Jeffrey's genes. As a child, he developed a testicular hernia that, when treated by surgery, gave him a fear of castration and seemed to lead into lasting withdrawal from his family and friendships and, by the time he was 15, into alcoholism and a liking for dead things. Lionel sees Jeffrey's main psychotic trigger lying in a need to control: his own need for intellectual and physical control resulted in a glass wall between himself and Jeffrey; Jeffrey's need for control grew into a need for drugged or dead lovers who submitted to him absolutely. Clear, modest, intelligent—and extremely disturbing.
Pub Date: March 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-12156-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
Daniels emerges as a force to be reckoned with—and not someone to cross. Of interest to politics junkies but with plenty of...
A lively, candid memoir from person-in-the-news Daniels.
The author is a household name for just one reason, as she allows—adding, though, that “my life is a lot more interesting than an encounter with Donald Trump.” So it is, and not without considerable effort on her part. Daniels—not her real name, but one, she points out, that she owns, unlike the majority of porn stars—grew up on the wrong side of town, the product of a broken home with few prospects, but she is just as clearly a person of real intelligence and considerable business know-how. Those attributes were not the reason that Trump called her on a fateful night more than a decade ago, but she put them to work, so much so that in some preliminary conversation, he proclaimed—by her account, his talk is blustery and insistent—that “our businesses are kind of a lot alike, but different.” The talk led to what “may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had, but clearly, he didn’t share that opinion.” The details are deeply unpleasant, but Daniels adds nuance to the record: She doesn’t find it creepy that Trump likened her to his daughter, and she reckons that as a reality show host, he had a few points in his favor even if he failed to deliver on a promise to get her on The Apprentice. The author’s 15 minutes arrived a dozen years later, when she was exposed as the recipient of campaign hush money. Her account of succeeding events is fast-paced and full of sharp asides pointing to the general sleaziness of most of the players and the ugliness of politics, especially the Trumpian kind, which makes the porn industry look squeaky-clean by comparison.
Daniels emerges as a force to be reckoned with—and not someone to cross. Of interest to politics junkies but with plenty of lessons on taking charge of one’s own life.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-20556-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2018
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