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Children of a Fireland
PAK, Gary, Children of a Fireland. University of Hawai’i Press (Honolulu, HI 96822-1888), 2004. 249p. ISBN 0-8248-2836-4 (sc), $17.95. Acid-Free.
Children of a Fireland is the latest effort by University of Hawaii English Professor Gary Pak. Pak who was a Fulbright Scholar also won a 1999 Ka Palapala Po’okela Award of Merit in Excellence in Writing Literature for A Ricepaper Airplane.
In Children of a Fireland the citizens of Kanewai, a windward Oahu town, find that their secrets being exposed when at first innocent and later malicious graffiti begins to mysteriously appear on the side wall of the recently closed movie theater. Most are certain that local bad boy Kalani Humphrey is behind the graffiti despite the fact he is serving time in a Honolulu prison. But with the unusual death of Hiram Ching, the owner of the movie theater, it is clear that other forces may be at work in Kanewai. Forces that cannot be expelled even with an exorcism by the local priest David Fonseca. Forces that can only be held at bay with the sacrifice of a dark hero.
Children of a Fireland begins with great promise. Kanewai, which appears to be modeled after Pak’s hometown Kaneohe, is the home of a host small town characters each described with all their individual quirks to make them immediately recognizable and familiar. Pak also expertly sets the tone and mood of the story by detailing the rise and fall of the old Kanewai Theater. When the graffiti begins to show up and the death of Hiram Ching indicate that other-worldly forces are at work in Kanewai it appears that readers are in for a truly hair-raising, chicken-skin producing story. Children of a Fireland delivers for approximately 70 pages but then slowly gets tangled up in a mass of vignettes that ultimately leaves readers feeling shortchanged with a long list of unanswered questions.
The story has a number of pointless additions that seem to muddle rather than add relevance or clarity to the overall storyline. There is a random ghost of a young woman “done wrong” by Hiram Ching in the theater’s women’s room. Clarissa Ching, the widow of Hiram Ching and mother of Kalani Humphrey distraughtly tells Father Fonseca the graffiti “The Father of Kalani Humphreys is responsible for his parents’ murders” means that Father Fonseca is going to kill Clarissa Ching. Here what appears to be foreshadowing does not bear out. Later Clarissa Ching prepares to come back to Kanewai to reveal and own up to the terrible secret she has been hiding all these years. The reader is left wondering if the secret is the fact that she is Kalani Humphrey’s mother or something more because Pak seems to lose interest in the theme during his attempt to bring a far-fetched resolution to the story.
Children of a Fireland might have been better if Pak had constructed a series of short stories for his characters around the central theme of Kanewai and the theater graffiti rather than attempt to intertwine their individual stories into a coherent novel.
Although Pak is successful at adding local flare to the story and expertly constructs Pidgin dialogs with for his characters, $17.95 is a steep price to pay for a mediocre story.Recommended only for libraries with interest in collecting books with Pidgin dialogs or about Hawaii.
Children of a Fireland is the latest effort by University of Hawaii English Professor Gary Pak. Pak who was a Fulbright Scholar also won a 1999 Ka Palapala Po’okela Award of Merit in Excellence in Writing Literature for A Ricepaper Airplane.
In Children of a Fireland the citizens of Kanewai, a windward Oahu town, find that their secrets being exposed when at first innocent and later malicious graffiti begins to mysteriously appear on the side wall of the recently closed movie theater. Most are certain that local bad boy Kalani Humphrey is behind the graffiti despite the fact he is serving time in a Honolulu prison. But with the unusual death of Hiram Ching, the owner of the movie theater, it is clear that other forces may be at work in Kanewai. Forces that cannot be expelled even with an exorcism by the local priest David Fonseca. Forces that can only be held at bay with the sacrifice of a dark hero.
Children of a Fireland begins with great promise. Kanewai, which appears to be modeled after Pak’s hometown Kaneohe, is the home of a host small town characters each described with all their individual quirks to make them immediately recognizable and familiar. Pak also expertly sets the tone and mood of the story by detailing the rise and fall of the old Kanewai Theater. When the graffiti begins to show up and the death of Hiram Ching indicate that other-worldly forces are at work in Kanewai it appears that readers are in for a truly hair-raising, chicken-skin producing story. Children of a Fireland delivers for approximately 70 pages but then slowly gets tangled up in a mass of vignettes that ultimately leaves readers feeling shortchanged with a long list of unanswered questions.
The story has a number of pointless additions that seem to muddle rather than add relevance or clarity to the overall storyline. There is a random ghost of a young woman “done wrong” by Hiram Ching in the theater’s women’s room. Clarissa Ching, the widow of Hiram Ching and mother of Kalani Humphrey distraughtly tells Father Fonseca the graffiti “The Father of Kalani Humphreys is responsible for his parents’ murders” means that Father Fonseca is going to kill Clarissa Ching. Here what appears to be foreshadowing does not bear out. Later Clarissa Ching prepares to come back to Kanewai to reveal and own up to the terrible secret she has been hiding all these years. The reader is left wondering if the secret is the fact that she is Kalani Humphrey’s mother or something more because Pak seems to lose interest in the theme during his attempt to bring a far-fetched resolution to the story.
Children of a Fireland might have been better if Pak had constructed a series of short stories for his characters around the central theme of Kanewai and the theater graffiti rather than attempt to intertwine their individual stories into a coherent novel.
Although Pak is successful at adding local flare to the story and expertly constructs Pidgin dialogs with for his characters, $17.95 is a steep price to pay for a mediocre story.Recommended only for libraries with interest in collecting books with Pidgin dialogs or about Hawaii.
Submitted in March 2005 by Marta Wiggins, LIS Student, University of Hawaii
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