“Whenever anybody spoke goody-good English outside of school, we razzed them, ‘You think you haole, eh?’” notes the teenage narrator, Poignant 1975 novel, All I Asking for Is My Body, which follows a family of Japanese nisei laborers on a Maui sugar cane plantation during World War II. Language and identity are common themes throughout Hawaiian literature. Locals often speak pidgin English, also known as Hawaiian English Creole. Language, and its signifying power, is a theme in Waimea, as it is in the real Hawaii. Even the guy that fixes the roof is a surfer. “My experience of surfing is purely as an observer,” he says, lounging barefoot in shade on his back porch, tossing scraps of cookie to lingering red-crested cardinals. When not writing, he gardens, visits the shooting range, or paddles his outrigger canoe (His 1992 travelogue, The Happy Isles of Oceania, details a journey through the South Pacific via kayak.) Theroux spends around half the year here summers are for Cape Cod. This is the famous North Shore, “the edge of the known world,” as it’s described in Waimea, “the absolute limit: beyond it was unreadable ocean, strange lands.”
![best somerset maugham short stories best somerset maugham short stories](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2B02P1N/william-somerset-maugham-25-january-1874-16-december-1965-was-a-british-playwright-novelist-and-short-story-writer-he-was-among-the-most-popular-writers-of-his-era-and-reputedly-the-highest-paid-author-during-the-1930s-among-his-short-stories-some-of-the-most-memorable-are-those-dealing-with-the-lives-of-western-mostly-british-colonists-in-the-far-east-they-typically-express-the-emotional-toll-the-colonists-bear-by-their-isolation-rain-footprints-in-the-jungle-and-the-outstation-are-considered-especially-notable-maugham-was-one-of-the-most-significant-travel-writers-of-t-2B02P1N.jpg)
Gabbling pet geese wander the backyard, which slopes to his writing cabin, all of it gated by towering bamboo groves.
![best somerset maugham short stories best somerset maugham short stories](https://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/ss_thumbnails/anin-depthanalysisofthemanifestationofemotionsandideasthroughsimilesinshortstoriesbysomersetmaugham-130401080958-phpapp01-thumbnail-4.jpg)
His handsome home sits up a mountain overlooking Waimea Bay. Theroux, 80, most famous as a travel writer, pens Waimea from the perspective of a local. But when you live here, you see that’s the case.” I wouldn’t expect a visitor to understand that. Each of these situations is its own island-it’s islands upon islands. “You have different microclimates, religions, ethnic groups. “This place is very divided,” Theroux says. Like Hotel Honolulu (2002), Theroux’s other Hawaii-set novel, the book explores Hawaii’s darker corners: drug addiction, class division, homelessness, gossipy locals-what visitors overlook. The lengthy book follows an Oahu big-wave surfer,Īs he struggles with aging, losing his “stoke,” and the aftermath of a deadly car accident on a rainy road overlooking Waimea Bay. Many Hawaii-set short stories, and a few byįresh to that list is Theroux’s new novel, Under the Wave at Waimea, published in April through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. They are books like The House Without a Key (1925) byĪnd Sharks in the Time of Saviors (2020) by For every thousand Hawaii-set pulp romances and vacation guides, there is maybe one worthwhile literary work. Between its extreme geography, dramatic history, and colorful residents, Hawaii, portrayed well, makes for a uniquely attractive setting for a story.