Hula

by Lisa Shea

Book Overview

For two young girls in the 1960s, the family backyard is both playground and prison. Among the bushes and brambles, it offers places to hide from the rages of their war-scarred father, places that also become secret gardens of the imagination. Told over the course of two hot Virginia summers, Hula presents a child's-eye view of a family drama played out to a chilling climax. The younger sister narrates, introducing us to her older sister's ritual...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393321304
• ISBN13: 9780393321302
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Profoundly human, insidiously honest...

This is a book I constantly buy and give to others, starting with my sisters. Sensitive and spot on, this is a tale of the modern family gone awry as seen through the eyes of two sister trying to grow up in spite of their circumstance. Their story unfolds as if accidentally. A truly brilliant book. Those of us from less than perfect childhoods will see our experiences here and will cringe with the recognition.

Is it a novel or a poem?

Lisa Shea's Hula is one of the finest miniature novels I've read. In fact, it's the only book that I ever began re-reading seconds after I turned over the last page.Shea's prose is spare and evocative; her story is both beautiful and frightening. I've never read a novel before that seemed so much like a poem. Not because the language was "poetic," but because the book is so beautifully condensed, and it moves from one enigmatic and startling image to the next.I keep buying copies of this book, and I keep giving them to friends.

The best book of realistic childhood I have ever read.

I bought hula off a table without thinking anything else about it but a simple summer read to pass time. It is by far one of the best books I have ever read. I think Lisa Shea's imagery of childhood is wonderful and almost disturbing. It makes one remember long since forgotten incidents and occurences of childhood. Brilliant.

a disturbing and attractive book

Lisa Shea's novel explores further many of the themes she established with her brilliant earlier short fiction. There is something in reading her work which is akin to seeing the beauty of a hurricane destroying everything in its path.

wonderful,amazingly accurate acount of girlhood,textural

I read this book in one sitting. She captures the smells, feeling, fears of young girls in the hot summer. Read it