'Flip' author flops badly on details of life in Hawai'i
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor
"Flip-Flopped" by Jill Smolinski. St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books, hardback, $23.95
Jill Smolinski often travels to Hawai'i, the press materials tell us. But the author of the frothy beach read "Flip-Flopped" sure doesn't live here.
If she did, she'd know we never call slippers flip-flops. She'd have made sure her publisher got the 'okina right (it faces right, not left — mahalo). She'd know that Fijians don't dance the hula. She'd know that here, so close to the equator, it's dark long before 8 o'clock. She'd know that implying that the Big Island has a large media pool is laughable. And she'd know better than to
depict Hawaiians as lazy, aimless, partying louts ... when they're not being shown as deeply spiritual keepers of the old gods' flame — tissue-thin portraits, both.
Once you get past all this — although why should you, when you could read a nice, shallow book about a part of the country that you don't know as well, thus assuring steady blood pressure? — the story here isn't too bad.
Smolinski is at her best when she's writing about something more familiar to her than island life, such as the character of Mainland-born Keeley Baker-Kekuhi. A subplot involving the '60s boy band The Monkees gives rise to one of the most amusing segments in the book, when a 7-year-old Keeley actually gets to meet her heartthrob, Davy Jones. Smolinski is on well-known ground here, and it shows.
But it's difficult to understand why Smolinski didn't set the book in Southern California, where she lives, because neither she nor her central character seem to "get it" about Hawai'i. Despite having lived in the
Islands for some years and having married a local man and had a child with him, Keeley is stunningly clueless about this place. And, given her carping about Hawaiian time and other matters (she blames our slowness on the flip-flops, in which she claims you can't walk fast), she doesn't seem to like it very much.
Be that as it may, Keeley's problem is her husband, Kam (named for Pele's shark brother, Kamohoali'i). He's a problem for two reasons: He's a loser, and she loves him.
Her other problem is her job. She's a volcanologist for a fictional government agency that won't let her do volcanology. But she suspects the Big Bang is coming back on Mount Kohala, and she can't get anyone to take her seriously.
It takes some skill to write a book in which a breakup makes a great ending, and Smolinski does manage to keep the tension going about both the relationship and the volcano right to the end.
The bottom line here is that this type of book isn't my cup of kava: Setting aside the flubs on the setting, I don't care for books with implausible plots, breezy humor that comes off strained and characters who make light of serious stuff. In other words, I'm not much for contemporary beach-read fiction. If you are, you might enjoy this one. As for me, pass the new Tony Hillerman.
