Shark Dialogues

A Novel

By: Kiana Davenport

Narrated by: Jolene Kim

Length: 25 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

“Compares with Toni Morrison.” (Glamour)

Beginning with the fateful meeting of a 19th-century Yankee sailor and the runaway daughter of a Tahitian chief, and sweeping over a century and a half of passionate, turbulent Hawaiian history, Shark Dialogues takes its place as the first novel to do justice to the rich heritage and cruel conflicts of the beautiful and beleaguered islands and their people. Surreal, provocative, erotic, magical, meaningful, and supremely wise, it is a tale of islanders and invaders, of victors and victims, of queens and whores, of lepers and healers. And at its center are Pono, the magnificent pure-blooded matriarch and seer, and her four mixed-blood granddaughters seeking to come to terms with the contradictions of their ancestries and the hungers of their hearts. Their loves, their hates, the bonds joining them, and the furies possessing them are interwoven with ancient legends and lore of the islands whose past offers their salvation and whose future is their fate. Kiana Davenport has written a major contribution to the literature of the Pacific Rim—a great listening experience both brilliantly contemporary in its form and timeless in its illumination.

“A giant, image-fevered, luxuriant saga of a Hawaiian family...powerful, memorable, intoxicating.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Complex, resonant...handles the sweep of history and the nuance of the personal equally well.... Sensuous.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

©1994 Kiana Davenport (P)2022 Audible, Inc.

Maika’i

As a native Hawaiian I can say story line is much like growing up in present day Hawaii; passionate, confusing, patriotic and everything between. Fiction mixes with non fiction events and stories of old. Mahalo to the author and reader of this novel . Maka’I loa ame mahalo piha .

A treasure

Loved this book. Some of the narrating was off, pausing and not pausing at appropriate times, but the accents were brilliantly done.

Cultural implications and sensitivity

There is much to learn and understand about the people of Hawaii and their culture. This novel is beautifully written and eye opening. I will “see” even more the third time.

No score-horrible

Worst book and now I can’t get it off my phone! Hate the narrators, horrible language, no story, terrible content, waste of time and insulting to literature. No stars is true rating but rating would not accept less than 1 star