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Shark Dialogues Kiana Davenport Books

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Shark Dialogues Kiana Davenport Books

Shark Dialogues is a great, sprawling, and difficult – nay, devastating – book. Reviewers and readers have described it as the “history of Hawaii, dominated by a powerhouse of a matriarch.” Indeed, such is a quick caricature of its structure and unfolding, but that's like describing the Pacific Ocean as “a huge, peaceful sea teeming with life.” More than a historical novel, Davenport gives us a tapestry of the inescapable solitude of the human animal, and portrays it where it is most cruelly manifest – in the aboriginal lives of many lands. She chooses her own Hawaii for her main canvas, but she weaves in others as she goes. Those first people in all the lands where they still exist are different from the rest of us. They have a connection to the land and its denizens that goes much farther in than we seem able even to imagine. Those threads of kinship reach down to the time when the living creatures and the inanimate environment were evolving together. I think we sojourners are unlucky; we are alone in a very different manner. The aboriginal connection creates powerful threads binding all together.

But those threads are dying today and we can barely make out what they were. So Davenport lifts the veil and lets us dwell for a time in the realm of the shark people. Central is the story of Pono, a large, powerful kahuna, a kind of sorcerer (and she does indeed have strange abilities) and her family. Hawaii has been in the throes of destruction since long before the story begins, and so Pono cannot become in full that which she was born. She is caught in an invading culture that more and more is disfranchising her kind, as it is destroying the land, the sea creatures, the birds, the air, the water. Pono struggles to survive and give her grandchildren the tools to survive in this world. A dreadful scene brings this theme to vivid life, as a volcano explodes and lava pours. Later, a matching scene shows people, like shadows, visiting the hardened lava over their destroyed homes, listening for the sounds of their old lives.

Pono does survive. She loves. She has children. Caught up in her turmoil, she is a bad mother, negligent and harsh and unloving. She has grandchildren to whom she has always been much the same. But as the book unfolds, she begins to work toward change. The characters are victims, abusers, slave-masters, greedy capitalists, revolutionaries, the diseased, the drugged, the despairing, the weak. And the strong. All seek connection – somewhere, to something, to someone – to make our one journey through life worth its pain. Pono cannot make a network that would sustain her children, and those children haven't the strength to sustain their own children. Those grandchildren, though, are caught in a moment of light where Pono's courage can reach them. Nothing, neither success nor failure, comes easily. Their world is heaving with lava deep underground and atmospheres from the “first world” - what a misnomer – threaten them from above.

This book is grossly dark and cruel in places, blessedly light in others. Courage and weakness in every form you can imagine and some you have never thought of. Some readers have complained about the sex scenes. Yes, there are many, and they are exotic, loving, pornographic, gross, intriguing. They are alive with real people locked in their solitudes, yet reaching deep within another. To end, if just for a second's fraction, their pain.

Postscript: Several readers have said Davenport needed an editor and a fact checker for this book. While it's true that Darwin, Australia, is not the country's capitol, it is the capitol of the Northern Territories, a small error in a book about Hawaii. Some say she repeats herself, the book should have been shorter. Others complain that the book should have been clearer.

O people: You are picking, picking, picking at the great shark trapped in the shallows. Davenport found this book deep inside herself and brought it, powerfully, into the light of day. Take it, for all its glories and its flaws. There's nothing else quite like it.


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Shark Dialogues Kiana Davenport Books Reviews

I LOVE THIS BOOK. It is very well-written and is probably one of the best books on Hawaii that shows so much heart. Having lived in Hawaii for four years and loving every moment of my time there, I am heartbroken to know even more about the rape of the islands by whites. I have read all of Davenport's books, and highly recommend them to anyone interested in that wonderful state.
As someone who lived in Hawai`i for 17 years and mingled with every level and ethnic mix of current society, someone fascinated with history who made a point of investigating and examining for herself the past that's created the islands as we know them now, I found Ms. Davenport's book riveting, brimful of characters and events I could place in my mind and on the 'aina/land - not incidentally the singular most important character of the book.

But a truthful tone alone will not great writing make. This author has been blessed with poetical fantasy that induces one to slow one's reading pace with sheer delight at her word selection, at certain paragraphs that soar up into the warm rains & rainbows that simultaneously grace the isles. So while one day your mind might be swirling along with the avarice normally reserved for page-turning detective fiction, another day will find you closing the covers after a short section has left you reeling with beauty and a powerful gut response requiring the same digestion period reserved for a first class, multi-coursed meal. Yes, 'Shark Dialogues' is really THAT good a huge read filled with tumult & whirl balanced meticulously on century-formed resistant Hawaiian lava rock and finely chosen authentic minutiae.

This is my second copy of Shark Dialogues, so I may gift the other to someone important to me. If I were wealthier, I just might mail it out to most everyone on my true friends list. That's the level of praise I have for this intense and magnificent drama.
One of the few books in my 60 years I literally could not put down!! I am not Hawaiian but I have lived on various islands in the Caribbean and Hawaii many years of my life. I have 4 daughters whom I raised alone and I related heavily to this story of family love, friction, and sibling rivalry. Not to sound presumptuous, but I saw myself as the Pono character in Ms. Davenport's novel. Most mothers (and especially single ones) must be very self sacrificing and spiritual (like Pono) in order to survive and live to see her children survive. This book blew me away from the first page until the last. i loved how Ms. Davenport mixed legend with history and suspended 'reality' so well that more than once I had to re-read pages/paragraphs and wonder if Pono really morphed into a shark as she swam with her amakua (Hawaiian spirit animal). At the end of all the turmoil, blood, sweat, tears, politics, lost loves, drugs, disease, death and despair...I was left with a sense of deep peace and reconciliation...and that describes a great (epic) story. This book should undoubtedly be made into a movie or mini-series.
Loved this book. Bought to read while on vacation in Hawaii. Didn't realize what a pain in the butt haoies are to the wonderful people of Hawaii. Left Maui much more respectful. Ordered Davenport's Song of the Exile because I loved this book so much. Surprisingly.she incorporated some of the characters from this book. But over-all her second book was not the sweeping saga that I expected. Will be re-reading Shark Dialogues soon because there is so much poetry in the writing, I'm sure I missed a lot of it as I raced through this book to see what would happen next.
Shark Dialogues is a great, sprawling, and difficult – nay, devastating – book. Reviewers and readers have described it as the “history of Hawaii, dominated by a powerhouse of a matriarch.” Indeed, such is a quick caricature of its structure and unfolding, but that's like describing the Pacific Ocean as “a huge, peaceful sea teeming with life.” More than a historical novel, Davenport gives us a tapestry of the inescapable solitude of the human animal, and portrays it where it is most cruelly manifest – in the aboriginal lives of many lands. She chooses her own Hawaii for her main canvas, but she weaves in others as she goes. Those first people in all the lands where they still exist are different from the rest of us. They have a connection to the land and its denizens that goes much farther in than we seem able even to imagine. Those threads of kinship reach down to the time when the living creatures and the inanimate environment were evolving together. I think we sojourners are unlucky; we are alone in a very different manner. The aboriginal connection creates powerful threads binding all together.

But those threads are dying today and we can barely make out what they were. So Davenport lifts the veil and lets us dwell for a time in the realm of the shark people. Central is the story of Pono, a large, powerful kahuna, a kind of sorcerer (and she does indeed have strange abilities) and her family. Hawaii has been in the throes of destruction since long before the story begins, and so Pono cannot become in full that which she was born. She is caught in an invading culture that more and more is disfranchising her kind, as it is destroying the land, the sea creatures, the birds, the air, the water. Pono struggles to survive and give her grandchildren the tools to survive in this world. A dreadful scene brings this theme to vivid life, as a volcano explodes and lava pours. Later, a matching scene shows people, like shadows, visiting the hardened lava over their destroyed homes, listening for the sounds of their old lives.

Pono does survive. She loves. She has children. Caught up in her turmoil, she is a bad mother, negligent and harsh and unloving. She has grandchildren to whom she has always been much the same. But as the book unfolds, she begins to work toward change. The characters are victims, abusers, slave-masters, greedy capitalists, revolutionaries, the diseased, the drugged, the despairing, the weak. And the strong. All seek connection – somewhere, to something, to someone – to make our one journey through life worth its pain. Pono cannot make a network that would sustain her children, and those children haven't the strength to sustain their own children. Those grandchildren, though, are caught in a moment of light where Pono's courage can reach them. Nothing, neither success nor failure, comes easily. Their world is heaving with lava deep underground and atmospheres from the “first world” - what a misnomer – threaten them from above.

This book is grossly dark and cruel in places, blessedly light in others. Courage and weakness in every form you can imagine and some you have never thought of. Some readers have complained about the sex scenes. Yes, there are many, and they are exotic, loving, pornographic, gross, intriguing. They are alive with real people locked in their solitudes, yet reaching deep within another. To end, if just for a second's fraction, their pain.

Postscript Several readers have said Davenport needed an editor and a fact checker for this book. While it's true that Darwin, Australia, is not the country's capitol, it is the capitol of the Northern Territories, a small error in a book about Hawaii. Some say she repeats herself, the book should have been shorter. Others complain that the book should have been clearer.

O people You are picking, picking, picking at the great shark trapped in the shallows. Davenport found this book deep inside herself and brought it, powerfully, into the light of day. Take it, for all its glories and its flaws. There's nothing else quite like it.