The Descendants
Confession time, most of the books I read are not purchased from small independent book shops, or even Waterstones a shop I totally love and have worked in TWICE. No i purchase most of my books from.... Supermarkets. Mainly because they are A LOT cheaper that way so the volume I get to read is much more. At the moment the books I am reading tend to be ones recently made into films or ones that are fairly mainstream, which is fine because I'm not a book snob.
Anyway moving swiftly on, The Descendants took me about a week to get through, which considering it is quite a small book is surprising! It's deceptively weighty though, considering it is packaged into a book that's just shy of 300 pages it sure packs a punch! So its told from the first person perspective of Matt King, a middle aged dad who's wife is in a coma and who doesn't know much about his kids at all. You get plonked right in the middle of the story and then it kind of works its way out from there filling in any gaps that way.
Set in Hawaii (yes i had to check the book to be able to spell that haha) most books set in a tropical paradise are so dreamy that from the outset you can smell the coconut sun lotion and pina colada, with this book the Hawaii only serves to prove that, paradise is a place and not what happens when you live there! Anyway I found this book to be captivating, not because it pulled me into an adventure, it certainly doesn't make you feel like you are surfing in Hawaiian waters. But because it pulls you in when this man is at the lowest possible point you can imagine, he is realising his wife is going to die, he has two stranger daughters and he needs to find the man his wife has been sleeping with in secret in order to let him say his goodbye... does it get worse that?
Its a book of small moments, feelings, tragedy, laughter and honesty. None of the characters are instantly likable but are all immediately relate able except perhaps the youngest daughter Scottie, who comes out with things that would make the most liberal of parents start to worry about what their daughter had been exposed to. Aside all the bad things that happen that make this a good book the relationships between each and every character kept me interested!
In other words its a good read, won't change your life but will sure get you thinking about important things.
In other words its a good read, won't change your life but will sure get you thinking about important things.
