The Stench of Honolulu

A Tropical Adventure

By: Jack Handey

Narrated by: Jack Handey

The legendary Deep Thoughts and New Yorker humorist Jack Handey is back with his very first novel-a hilarious, absurd, far-flung adventure tale.

The Stench of Honolulu

Are you a fan of books in which famous tourist destinations are repurposed as unlivable hellholes for no particular reason? Read on!

Jack Handey's exotic tale is full of laugh-out-loud twists and unforgettable characters whose names escape me right now. A reliably unreliable narrator and his friend, who is some other guy, need to get out of town. They have a taste for adventure, so they pay a visit to a relic of bygone days-a travel agent-and discover an old treasure map. She might have been a witch, by the way. Our heroes soon embark on a quest for the Golden Monkey, which takes them into the mysterious and stinky foreign land of Honolulu. There, they meet untold dangers, confront strange natives, kill and eat Turtle People, kill some other things and people, eat another thing, and discover the ruins of ancient civilizations.

As our narrator says, "The ruins were impressive. But like so many civilizations, they forgot the rule that might have saved them: Don't let vines grow all over you."

Insane?!?

Where does The Stench of Honolulu rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Can anyone tell me which insane asylum this author lives? Funny and totally bazaar.

hilarious!

easy 1 sitting book. very funny and entertaining. jack handey is a favorite of mine.

Hardest I’ve laughed at a book

Jack Handey is a comedy savant. He’s not for everybody, but this book is a series of Deep Thoughts strung together into a “story.”

Wrong Way Slurps did me in.

Funniest book in the history of literature

This book honestly deserves six stars out of five. It is the funniest book ever written. I come back to it and read it again every few years, and I just about die laughing every single time. This was my first time listening to it in audiobook form, and the author’s laconic reading of it just made it all that much better. Maybe the audio version should be seven stars out of five. 

Dry. Incoherent. Hilarious.

It's basically Deep Thoughts crammed into a flimsy plot. I love his stuff, but I could only take so much at a time due to dryness desensitization. Then I'd come back to it and it was hilarious again. His tone is hysterical, and I could definitely see re-listening to this in the future.