Women Just Wanna Have Lives
The hot magma chamber of creativity bubbling up on the slopes of Mauna Kea has given us many rich and enchanting voices.
Recent novels from Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes and Kaui Strong Washburn arrived on a solid foundation laid by Juliet Kono, Kiana Davenport and Mark Panek. Now Zoë Eisenberg enters the mix with a significant debut novel, Significant Others.
It’s a story of a pod of no-longer-young, not quite settled thirtysomething friends—two women and a man, who’s the twin of one of the women—living under the same Hilo roof. Working the cringeworthy jobs available in a tourist-industry state—or helping to sell off paradise to newcomers—they barely navigate an unconventional ‘ohana riven by passive-aggressive energy. Can anything change their lives before they stale out, dissolve in alcohol and/or meaningless hookups?
