Found this review of The Descendants, by Kaui Hart Hemmings in The Week:
In this “refreshingly wry” debut novel, said The New York Times, a wealthy Hawaiian attorney discovers the costs of his obliviousness after his wife suffers a near-fatal boating accident. Though Kaui Hart Hemmings sometimes leaves critical scenes underdeveloped, her “dry understated way” makes this story of generational conflict and marital betrayal a pleasure.
(The full NYT review is here.)
Here is a review from the blog Pop Goes Fiction:
Matthew King is one of Hawaii’s largest landowners, but his life is falling apart. His wife, Joanie, is in a coma after a boating accident and he’s perplexed by and distant from his two daughters, 17-year-old Alex, and 10-year-old Scottie. Alex has had problems with drugs in the past and is in boarding school, while Scottie is troublingly precocious. Matt then finds out that his wife had been having an affair and wanted to leave him, which complicates his family’s life even more. He also has to decide whether to sell his family’s large swath of land to real estate developers. With the action to take Joanie off life support (she has a living will), Matt struggles to do right by his daughters. The Descendants is a novel filled with humor, sadness, and healing. It also has a interesting setting in the islands of Oahu and Kauai.
Here is a short interview with Kaui Hart Hemmings from NPR.
I may have to look into this one…