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Ho'kwat
In the present day, an aging Englishman named John Williams endeavors to write his memoirs. He recalls storms at sea, rousing battles, and mysterious encounters with whales, occurring in the early 1800s.
252 pages, Paperback
Published April 11, 2023
About the author
David Hooper
96 books6 followersThere is more than one author on Goodreads by this name
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 13, 2024
Ho'kwat is a great read. Clever, funny, smart. Humor, fantasy, and a very playful style keep horrible events from seeming real or serious. It's a bit like Candide. Or Roughing It. The Golden Ass, Gulliver, or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Did I say that Ho'kwat is a wonderful novel? Yea. Well, I'm biased. I love satire, especially when it's wrapped in the picaresque, especially when the journey leads me to insights and coastlines I haven't visited before.
Mr. Hooper's tale is set along the Northwest Coast at the start of the 19th Century. Four colonial powers vied for advantage: Spain, England, the US, and Russia. Long before there was gold in California, there were furs in the Northwest. Many indigenous tribes populated the coast. Europeans and Native Americans had just begun to interact. What could go wrong?
Most characters are Russian or Indigenous. The ship's captain is crazy. His wife is very strong, uniquely so, utterly unexpected for the time and place. The narrator, Williams, is an American navigator/spy/murderer who washed up in Russian territory and gets carried along by currents/rivers/events. Ships explode, hostilities ensue, ships wreck, people die, dogs talk, whales dance, owls shapeshift. Opium affects the narration. Hallucinogenic mushrooms induce mystical experience. Owls are gods, men are ravens, and whale poop has healing properties. The Europeans are mostly crazed. The Native elders are mostly wise.
This book is a great mix of satire, fantasy, and action. But it is not entirely a product of Hooper's imagination. It is an historical novel. There really was a Russian captain and his wife, and a ship that went aground, the survivors did encounter several tribes, they nearly starved, some died, they were enslaved, and eventually they were rescued. The events in Hooper's novel were chronicled and published in the 19th Century. Also preserved in tribal oral history. There are markers along the Washington coast recognizing the events. At least one scholar wrote about the unusual agency of the Russian woman. One writer recently wrote a romance about the Captain and his wife. Then Hooper wrote this book. He preserves most of the historical facts, names of people, tribes, and ships. He covers facts with endless satire, literary whale poop, that cauterizes whatever pain the original facts might otherwise suggest. Hooper deconstructs history to create fiction. Ho'kwat is first and foremost fiction. Historical fiction, yes, but hysterical historical fiction.
In the end, readers need not know Hooper's source, no more than audience members in a theater need to know Shakespeare's sources. Ho'kwat is a great read and deserves more attention than it seems to be getting. I like what Hooper has done.
Mr. Hooper's tale is set along the Northwest Coast at the start of the 19th Century. Four colonial powers vied for advantage: Spain, England, the US, and Russia. Long before there was gold in California, there were furs in the Northwest. Many indigenous tribes populated the coast. Europeans and Native Americans had just begun to interact. What could go wrong?
Most characters are Russian or Indigenous. The ship's captain is crazy. His wife is very strong, uniquely so, utterly unexpected for the time and place. The narrator, Williams, is an American navigator/spy/murderer who washed up in Russian territory and gets carried along by currents/rivers/events. Ships explode, hostilities ensue, ships wreck, people die, dogs talk, whales dance, owls shapeshift. Opium affects the narration. Hallucinogenic mushrooms induce mystical experience. Owls are gods, men are ravens, and whale poop has healing properties. The Europeans are mostly crazed. The Native elders are mostly wise.
This book is a great mix of satire, fantasy, and action. But it is not entirely a product of Hooper's imagination. It is an historical novel. There really was a Russian captain and his wife, and a ship that went aground, the survivors did encounter several tribes, they nearly starved, some died, they were enslaved, and eventually they were rescued. The events in Hooper's novel were chronicled and published in the 19th Century. Also preserved in tribal oral history. There are markers along the Washington coast recognizing the events. At least one scholar wrote about the unusual agency of the Russian woman. One writer recently wrote a romance about the Captain and his wife. Then Hooper wrote this book. He preserves most of the historical facts, names of people, tribes, and ships. He covers facts with endless satire, literary whale poop, that cauterizes whatever pain the original facts might otherwise suggest. Hooper deconstructs history to create fiction. Ho'kwat is first and foremost fiction. Historical fiction, yes, but hysterical historical fiction.
In the end, readers need not know Hooper's source, no more than audience members in a theater need to know Shakespeare's sources. Ho'kwat is a great read and deserves more attention than it seems to be getting. I like what Hooper has done.
Displaying 1 of 1 review