Book Review: Kaui Hart Hemmings' House of Thieves Unlocks Trouble in Hawaii

House of Thieves
By Kaui Hart Hemmings
Penguin Press, 256 pages, $22.95
ISBN 1594200483


The title of Kaui Hart Hemmings' intriguing collection of short stories is the translation of the Hawaiian town of Haleiwa.  The twelve year old narrator of the title-bearing tale says, "In third grade Hawaiiana I learned that 'hale' means 'house' and 'iwa' means 'handsome person' or 'thief.' "  To this pre-teen, Haleiwa "is the cool capital of the world" because it embraces everything she is in awe of : surfers, slackers, shirkers and shysters.

In this pivotal story and the eight other haunting pieces that make up this collection, Hemmings shows us that the state sport of Hawaii is plundering.  In "House of Thieves," all families are splintered, relationships are fractured and possessions are up for grabs.  The victim of such pillaging is the emerging generation.  Kids are robbed of parents through divorce, death or coma.  They are clueless as to their ancestry and heritage.  As a result, they are in danger of becoming a disconnected, cynical lot.

Hemmings does a wonderful job of speaking as them, to them and for them in her narratives.  She skillfully switches point of view from story to story as fluidly as some of us change clothers.  By setting these tales against the rich backdrop of Hawaii, Hemmings dramatically contrasts the abundant with the bereft.  To be dispossessed in Hawaii is to be deprived of a great deal - a language, an ethnicity, a culture, a spirituality.  Her protagonist punk says, with perhaps a bit too much self-awareness, "If we get caught for fighting or vandalism I will simply say that we're just kids growing up on an island, doing bad things in pretty places."