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Zusatztext “A Pandora’s box–style tragicomedy . . . [Kaui Hart Hemmings’s] comic sense is finely honed in this refreshingly wry debut novel.”— The New York Times Book Review “With beautiful and blunt prose! Hemmings explores the emotional terrain of grief! promising something far more fulfilling than paradise at its end.”— San Francisco Chronicle “A surprising and affecting novel! a story about death and infidelity that manages to be a finer! lighter story about life and love.”— Time Out New York Informationen zum Autor Kaui Hart Hemmings Klappentext Now a major motion picture starring George Clooney and directed by Alexander PayneFortunes have changed for the King family, descendants of Hawaiian royalty and one of the state's largest landowners. Matthew King's daughters-Scottie, a feisty ten-year-old, and Alex, a seventeen-year-old recovering drug addict-are out of control, and their charismatic, thrill-seeking mother, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident. She will soon be taken off life support. As Matt gathers his wife's friends and family to say their final goodbyes, a difficult situation is made worse by the sudden discovery that there's one person who hasn't been told: the man with whom Joanie had been having an affair. Forced to examine what they owe not only to the living but to the dead, Matt, Scottie, and Alex take to the road to find Joanie's lover, on a memorable journey that leads to unforeseen humor, growth, and profound revelations. 1 the sun is shining, mynah birds are chattering, palm trees are swaying, so what. I’m in the hospital and I’m healthy. My heart is beating as it should. My brain is firing off messages that are loud and clear. My wife is on the upright hospital bed, positioned the way people sleep on airplanes, her body stiff, head cocked to the side. Her hands are on her lap. “Can’t we lay her flat?” I ask. “Wait,” my daughter Scottie says. She takes a picture of her mother, a Polaroid. She fans herself with the photo, and I press the button on the side of the bed to lower my wife’s upper body. I release the button when she is almost flat on her back. Joanie has been in a coma for twenty-three days, and in the next few days I’ll have to make some decisions based on our doctor’s final verdict. Actually, I’ll just have to find out what the doctor has to say about Joanie’s condition. I don’t have any decisions to make, since Joanie has a living will. She, as always, makes her own decisions. Today is Monday. Dr. Johnston said we’ll talk on Tuesday, and this appointment is making me nervous, as though it’s a romantic date. I don’t know how to act, what to say, what to wear. I rehearse answers and reactions, but I’ve nailed only the lines that respond to favorable scenarios. I haven’t rehearsed Plan B. “There,” Scottie says. Her real name is Scottie. Joanie thought it would be cool to name her after Joanie’s father, Scott. I have to disagree. I look at the photo, which looks like those joke snapshots everyone takes of someone sleeping. I don’t know why we think they’re so funny. There’s a lot that can be done to you while you’re sleeping. This seems to be the message. Look how vulnerable you are, the things you aren’t aware of. Yet in this picture you know she isn’t just sleeping. Joanie has an IV and something called an endotracheal tube running out of her mouth to a ventilator that helps her breathe. She is fed through a tube and is administered enough medication to sustain a Fijian village. Scottie is documenting our life for her social studies class. Here’s Joanie at Queen’s Hospital, her fourth week in a coma, a coma that has scored a 10 on the Glasgow scale and a III on the Rancho Los Amigos scale. She was in a race and was launched from an offshore powerboat going eighty miles an hour, but I think she will be okay. “She reacts nonpurposefully to stimu...
