This book is hard hard work. It may be poetic, but above all it s just plain pain. Father of Four Passages is beautiful.
Art can be that way.
A quick look at a dozen literary review titles, spread across my desk, reflects much the same sentiment over Ms. Yamanaka s decade of work. There are more, plenty more opinions about Lois-Ann Yamanaka s always lyrical, often gritty, view of her Hawai i neighborhood. Father of Four Passages is deep enough to mean any number of contrary things to any number of people, but between the covers it is protagonist Sonia Kurisu s story. Sonia does her best to survive Kalihi. He was eighteen.