The Floating City

Rating:
Summary: Superbly written history with a fictional overlay
Review: Hawaii in 1895 has been recently taken over by whites with the help of a U.S. gunship and a contingent of marines. Eve Hanson, a recent immigrant from Norway, is caught up in the accompanying rebellion of the native Hawaiians against their oppressors, chiefly as the result of her discovering the body of a murdered man. The story, itself, is less important than the graphically described Honolulu of that turbulent period--the prostitutes, the drunken sailors, the leper catchers, the opium dens, the tambourine shaking evangelicals and the arrogant Americans who stole Hawaii from its inhabitants.

Rating:
Summary: An indefensible tragedy
Review: Interspersed between the chapters of Floating City, are short historical vignettes, documenting the events that destroyed Hawaiian society in its original tribal innocence and system of government.. Near the end of the novel, the historical events merge into actual time with the story line. Ultimately, Hawaii's self-governance is destroyed by the consummate greed of her conquerors, a fertile territory to poach and plunder, until Hawaii is finally attached to the U.S. as a state.

As the main characters are introduced, they are defined by the perceptions of Eva Hanson, a haole, native for caucasian, with reputed psychic abilities. However, Eva's unusual talents exist in the form of psychic intuitions, often experienced as a hyper-awareness of imminent personal danger. Because of her race, Eva's attempts to remain in the background of events are virtually impossible, and she remains disconcertingly visible to government officials. Nothing, and no one, is what it seems, and Eva is constantly reminded of the delicacy of her position. This heightened awareness of the unexpected persists, coloring all the events with a certain air of unreality.

1890's Hawaii is a country caught in the accelerating turmoil of political upheaval, the characters churning through this historical evolution that will determine the future of their culture, from innocence to corruption, greed and decay. With haunting familiarity, an ancestral way of life is cannibalized by an amoral society whose value system is defined by acquisition of much for the few, particularly the rapacious European/American investors. History continually repeats itself; today the locusts have moved on to the next part of the world with natural resources vulnerable to exploitation, leaving the residue for the survivors to reconstruct.

Rating:
Summary: Atmospheric setting, intriguing heroine
Review: It's 1895 and Royalist rebellion threatens in Hawaii. When a well-dressed Hawaiian man washes up dead on the beach at Honolulu, disrupting the women's morning fishing, Eva Hanson - the only white woman - is drafted to report the news to the police. Eva, on her own and far from her native Norway, living as a fortuneteller under the stolen name of a dead woman, agrees reluctantly and only because her roommate, Lehua, saw her slip a jade necklace off the dead man and into her pocket.

But the body is missing when Eva returns with the police and her worst fears are realized when the police - accompanied by a white political type - come knocking the next day, asking about her connection to the dead man. Upstairs a Royalist rebel hides, given shelter by Lehua. Though frightened and angry, Eva resists the police questions, shelters the fugitive. She is being drawn in despite herself.

Though her hard life has made her cynical, Hawaii seemed to offer a new start. "There was an orphanage for Hawaiian girls across the street, and old whalers next door with a pet rooster. There was the Widow, locally famous for outliving all her husbands and winning the orchid show every year for the last twenty-two years, and a shamisen player who made enough racket to drive away the living as well as the dead. There was Lehua, who was half our of her mind with grief and opium, and for the first time in her life, Eva fit right in."

But it is two years since the white mans' overthrowing of the monarchy and the country is in turmoil. "Everyone points to someone else as the cause of the country's woes. Sailors blame the missionaries, the missionaries blame the opium dealers, sugar cane planters blame the rulings of the legislature, and the legislators blame the end of the American Civil War; which poured Southern sugar back into the market. The prostitutes blame the foreigners for bringing the kiss of death, and everyone else blames the Chinese."

Outside the palace of the deposed queen (Eva is hoping the queen will hire her palm reading services and make her reputation) Eva is caught up in a rally turned riot and rescued by a Scot - McClelland, a man of talents and secrets. "A man that quiet was someone to be wary of." And "A man as smooth with a lie as she was. It was disconcerting to recognize your traits in someone else." But Eva is not wary and love sweeps her up, though its path is rocky. And the authorities seem inexplicably determined to pin the still-missing dead man on her.

Ball, ("Lava") who was born and raised on Oahu, immerses her characters in the atmosphere of Hawaii, capturing the tropical lushness and poverty, the devastation of foreign diseases, the anger of the dispossessed and disenfranchised Hawaiians, the greed of Western sugar barons and the cold rigidity of the missionaries. Her characters are damaged, but ardent, full of hope in the midst of hopelessness. A fine novel from an award winning writer.

Rating:
Summary: One Hawaiian crime story told in context of larger crimes.
Review: Setting her mystery story in 1895, two years after the overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani, Ball deftly juggles the history of the Hawaiian monarchy and those rapacious outside forces which changed Hawaiian life forever. Creating a broad and fascinating context for what would otherwise be a simple mystery, Ball depicts a time in which Royalist gun-runners, supporting the Queen, try to establish a base in Oahu from which they can fight the Provisional Government of Sanford Dole and the sugar barons, a time in which this powerful and wealthy foreign "government" is able to exert so much pressure on a weak U.S. Senate that the Senate bows to their every wish rather than go to war against influential U.S. citizens in the Republic of Hawaii.

Ball successfully captures the frenzied lives of ordinary people in Honolulu during this time, those who collaborate with the new "authorities," those who actively oppose them, and those whose lives are forever changed by their actions. Eva Hansen, a Norwegian fortune-teller and sometime pickpocket who has assumed the identity of a woman who died at sea, and her friend Lehua, a part-Hawaiian "orphan," find a body while fishing. When Eva reports it to the police, she finds herself the unwitting target of forces who find her a danger to their plans. Moving through all levels of society from Queen Lili'uokalani herself to opium addicts, from the Asian community to immigrants like herself who are hoping some of the new "prosperity" will wash off on them, and from Hawaiians who work the land to those who must now figure out how to survive in the city, Eva tries to protect herself from the police, the politicians and their thugs, and the marines sent in to keep peace.

Without resorting to polemics, Ball includes brief, chronological, historical pieces between the chapters of the mystery, allowing the sordid facts to speak for themselves. With strong visual imagery, she brings alive and incorporates into her story the resulting impoverishment of the Hawaiians; the suffering from leprosy, smallpox, and other diseases; the attempts to preserve the banned Hawaiian language, hula dancing, and music; and the long-term damage to the Hawaiian way of life. Though the book is too short to provide for deep characterization, complicated plot twists, or a satisfying love story, Ball keeps the reader's interest high, telling a good story in simple language, while shining a spotlight on a particularly dark facet of American history. Appropriately, the conclusion is open-ended. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but unsatisfying
Review: The Floating City does a wonderful job of bringing Hawaii in the 1890s to life. Ball's descriptions are so wonderful you can almost smell them. Her writing is lovely and carries the reader along not wanting to stop. But what the books fails at is completing the story. There are far too many unanswered questions - not the least of which is how a woman from Norway (and not a very well schooled one at that) is managing to communicate with the Hawaiians and haoles. There's no explanation for why our heroine, Eva, suddenly decides to play detective despite everything telling her to run. Many of the books I read often leave me feeling that a good editor should have trimmed some of the story, this is the first in which I wish more had been added.

Rating:
Summary: Jewel of Jade
Review: What a wonderful read this sweet book is. At only 262 pages, it flies by quickly. Short chapters tell the story efficiently. I love books that transport me to a different time with different challenges. It appears that Ball has done a good deal of research on the cultural and political history of Hawaii in the late 1800s. The book is punctuated with a page at the end of each chapter that reads almost like a short history lesson on what was happening to the Queen as the story progresses.

The tale of Liv Norseng is one that also deals with the historical status of women as well as of the native Hawaiians. We learn how she flees Norway, travels around the world by boat, and assumes the identity of Eva Hanson. She certainly seems to have the sense of independence of the modern woman. The events seem reasonable for this period of time. Relating the fate of lepers in the islands, opium, the status of the Chinese, art and the political intrigue makes this a replete story that stays with you. The love interest with McClelland spices up the tale appropriately.

This is a many-sided story. The characters are well drawn and realistically portrayed. Pamela Ball tells the tale with a straightforward yet picturesque literary style. One can appreciate this book as a romance, a history, a political intrigue or a cultural snapshot. It captured my imagination! Enjoy!