Critical Review: Song of the Exile

Spring has come once again: The flowers are blooming, the air tastes a little bit cleaner, and Kiana Davenport has another book that I’m hoping to mock and prod at for being a hypocritical piece of rubber with double standards. To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t imagine bringing myself to actually read the book. For a few days after I acquired Song of the Exile it simply stared at me from the bookshelves alongside my collection of far more entertaining novels, daring me to come over and take a peek at how many times someone can write “haole” in a fortnight, and tempting me to take potshots with my pellet rifle.

Perhaps I did and perhaps I didn’t mention my animosity for Davenport’s earlier work to which I am going to compare it, but I guess a refresher course on being snarky is long overdue. I reviewed Shark Dialogues and found that it was just unpleasant, being a large collection of shock and ambiguous mysticism that ran on far longer than it needed to and had no real central drama to focus on or even try to focus on, for that matter. As a straightforward and not nitpicky sort of critique: It was sloppy, uninteresting, and did little more than try to take potshots at other races and cultures with a shield of flimsy justification. The justification was not in fact trying to give characterization unless Davenport wanted all of her characters to feel the same and be equally insufferable. So with a breath of fresh volcanic fog and a cup of coffee strapped to my hip I delved into the world of Song of the Exile.

The story follows the lives of Sun-ja Uanoe (Sunny), a Hawaiian/Korean student from an educated family, and Keo, a native jazz musician. The time setting is in the 1930s and while I was expecting angst, which does exist, I was actually pleasantly surprised when reading through the novel. The plot will be discussed but I feel that first, Davenport’s works need to be examined on the technique side more than anything else. Like Shark Dialogues, this novel has interesting bits of story but is sometimes cut down by old annoyances and some new ones as well. Both works have some immediate similarities as Davenport’s writing style becomes readily apparent from just the few first pages; they both deal with Hawaiian culture in some ways, and they both suffer from their characterization and wordiness.

The story begins to pique my interest and gain momentum when Keo leaves for New Orleans and Paris in order to pursue his career in music. Sure enough, he does indeed gain a reputation for himself; however one of the more ominous points comes from the rapidly spreading Nazi influence at the time. As we all know Paris was getting hungry eyes from Hitler from the start so I think we can see where this is going to blitzkrieg off to. Sunny decides to part from her turmoil-infested family and meets up coincidentally with her long lost lover, Keo.

Upon finding Nazi brutality in Paris, Keo decides that revolution is in style and revolts. Davenport had never been one for winning me over in the sensible department but thankfully Nazis, or Nazi replica entities, are much like skittles: No matter how many you rid the world of you’ll never have a bad taste in your mouth. It’s still Davenport’s style, but it feels more collected and focused than Shark Dialogues, thankfully. At this point I had begun to actually enjoy my reading. Perhaps this was the point where I turned around and began to appreciate it for what it was.

Continuing onward we experience Sunny traveling to Shanghai to uncover the fate of her clubfooted sister Lili who was pitched out by her father because, unfortunately, history has never been on the side of birth defects or women. This goes doubly so for the women of the Asian culture, apparently. Upon arrival, Sunny is captured by the Japanese and though we know the Japanese of today as the loveable yet questionable Pacific neighbors, the Japanese back then were more akin to bipolar wasps freshly woken up by a quarter stick of dynamite. Sunny spends years as a “comfort woman,” or sexual slave, for Japanese soldiers.

After the war and turmoil, Keo mourns for Sunny and continues to search for her as he develops his music further. As the U.S. pushes for Hawaiʻi’s statehood in 1959 the two families of Keo and Sunny begin to find some form of comfort and reconciliation. Sunny and Keo return to Hawaiʻi after the war in an ending that most people actually condemned. However, I like the grim turn that Davenport has decided to take this time around.

For plot, I give it a solid okay because it has some promise and lives up to the potential it presents. I was interested to see what whacky things happened next or what turmoil would come rolling along. Sunny’s plight in her imprisonment was absolutely horrid and I loved it, the Chinese-Hawaiian drug dealer dwarf was funny, and the overall weaving of the plot did wonders for the entertainment value. It seems as though Davenport has taken what criticism existed from Shark Dialogues and worked them in a productive way.

However, there are still issues that exist, such as the feeling that certain events could have been better expounded upon or visited. Upon studying a bit closer, it was revealed that the original story was 1500 pages long and underwent 24 revisions. That says a lot from my previous review of Shark Dialogues as I recall that I felt as if there was or should have been more to certain characters or events. Certain events and more interesting periods of time were glossed over or generalized and it felt like it had been hobbled at one point or another.

Song of the Exile pleasantly surprised me when it avoided the glossing and decided to shine some more light on the people and events taking place. This gives way to the one thing I wish Davenport would just throw out for the sake of the work: She improved on the description for certain things, managing the words as to not go purple in the face to read. Much like Shark Dialogues didn’t with the page of run-on sentences. I understand the use of long and unpunctuated sentences can be good; it is in fact a main selling point of Kurt Vonnegut’s works and he was considered one of the greatest authors in the world. However, there is doing something, and then doing way too much of something.

One positive example I would like to focus on was the description of the trumpet played by The Buddha which ignited some simple yet unbridled joy:

In that tiny room, people hammered tables, they stood and shouted. The

huge man kept on blowing, igniting the place with accusatory madness, his

horn almost disappearing in his huge, doughy gut. He darted and feinted,

playing soft now, intimate, his sounds skimming the levees of the river,

skimming white shoulders of magnolia, parting delta mist. Sweet and lovely,

yes. When the crowd thought they were with him, that they’d caught up,

could anticipate, he suddenly blew them ragtime – old, stiff, dotted eighth

and sixteenth notes – then slid into “swing” smooth, linear rhythms.

(Davenport Song 61)

I read the section a few more times and I could find myself sitting in that audience and banging my fist on a table as well. This was something that added to the quality and entertainment of the novel and that wasn’t extended until the author had either run out of printer toner or died. There were quite a few instances in which parts could have been shortened or nixed altogether but I was genuinely happy that it had been shorter. Sometimes a blue curtain is blue because my significant other and I have wildly differing opinions on interior design, Shark Dialogues. Not because it has combined with mold and slowly gained a hive mind like sentience with the patio furniture.

As for containing glossed over material, it is more of a personal taste because I understand that if it isn’t the most interesting point in a character’s life why talk about it, right? However you can take a single character, plop them in a room for several hours and still write plenty about it. I personally believe that splitting the novel into separate books to incorporate all of the stories and really make those words count like Davenport seems to have wanted to do would have been a better avenue. I think it would help if Davenport remembered that every place, person, or thing you mention without explaining is another question a reader might ask. Certain things like a table lamp probably don’t weigh too heavily on a reader’s mind, but mention a specific person or long period of time and people are bound to wonder what happened during that time or with that person.

Something Song of the Exile did that was in fact different was trying to switch viewpoints mid-page and that only added confusion to the mix of technical issues. The book had a moment where Sunny and Keo were talking, and then it continued to refocus until roughly the entire population of the American Midwest was pretty much standing in the same room. The problem with focusing on too many characters at once is that it dilutes the quality of the characters themselves. I like to consider this the Rail Wars Effect, in which as the number of characters increases, the quality of the storytelling falls dramatically, and in the worst of ways.

A quality example of the effect is demonstrated in both Song of the Exile and in Shark Dialogues as, even though the former worked on characterization more than the latter, they both ultimately fell prey to having characters that seemed to be far less interesting than those characters around them. This of course changes later on in the novel when imprisonment occurs and the horror begins to creep in like an eldritch miasma, but nevertheless it leaves one wondering about these other characters. It just continued to feel as though something was missing from the mix and I still can’t exactly put my finger on it.

So what did Song of the Exile do right in comparison to Shark Dialogues and innovate on its own? It opened up on and explored Hawaiian and Oriental culture, mythology, and folklore a bit like Shark Dialogues but without the psychotic reasoning of characters overflowing from angst. This was something that was technically easy to imagine being included as Davenport has a very Hawaiʻi-minded writing style which is reasonable seeing her heritage; but it’s always nice to be exposed to another culture. What it did better in this respect is, unlike Shark Dialogues, the novel was far less ambiguous and focused upon with less mysticism; in a good way. A section which I found interesting to read and learn from was this description of jade and its value:

And shopkeepers telling her how two hundred years ago captains of opium and

tea ships, ignorant of the value of jade, used it as ballast when sailing back from

the Orient. And how at night coolies carried off the jade, burying it for decades,

so their children’s children might not starve. (Davenport Song 339)

While small in note, this passage presented me with some interesting cultural insight that made the world in which the story existed more interesting.

The quality of characters in Song of the Exile seems to quickly outperform Shark Dialogues. However it did fall back into the original sin of presenting some interesting characters and their lives without giving them enough attention. This is on a personal note, but like I said, the more questions you raise the more people are going to want those questions answered. So in this sense, Davenport only has herself to blame. But still, she collects the credit for improving her characterizations as is illustrated in this passage describing Keo and his music:

After that, Keo blew his trumpet relentlessly, pouring out all he knew and felt,

all he remembered and imagined. He played in honor of a deaf Filipino at

Kamaka ‘Ukulele and Guitar Works, the man who had taught him how to hold

each instrument like a human, to feel each tremor in the wood as it inhaled and

exhaled. Now he held his horn that way, as if it were a child, a favorite pet.

Weeks passed, he began to feel impatience, a longing to hear his horn, not just

feel it in his nerve ends. (Davenport Song 48)

This whole paragraph put me in tune with Keo and did everything I had wanted to see in Shark Dialogues. It was the mainstay of what I wanted to hear about, something that made me feel like I could root for a character, and a defining trait that identified that character to me. Keo was born for music and he wanted to play and hear and feel his music on a level so much further than most musicians. This characterization of Keo as a trumpeter anxious to play and his adoration for his instrument stole my attention. This is what Davenport’s beautiful writing looks like and I am so glad to see it come out in Song of the Exile.

So overall, how similar is Song of the Exile to Shark Dialogues? The answer is a bit surprising as I compiled my own data and formulated my response. While Song of the Exile is indeed comparable to Shark Dialogues with its romantic subplots, it is overall, vastly different. The plot of Song of the Exile feels much more developed and interesting than Shark Dialogues. I actually would recommend Song of the Exile before Shark Dialogues.

Overall, Song of the Exile has blazed a trail ahead of Shark Dialogues and is now rightfully seated on my bookshelf instead of on the firing line. This proves that an author can adjust or simply do something different for the better. Then again, it comes back to the audience and personally Song of the Exile feels more targeted towards the audience I belong to. Objectively it is alright, it doesn’t break every single rule and it maintains a fairly stable platform. So it appears that my own frothing angst will have to remain buried underneath the surface waiting for the next opportunity to turn it into streamers.