The Ghost of Walter Kupau

By Lori Aquino

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566476852
• ISBN13: 9781566476850
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Mutual Publishing
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.5" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Chick Lit Through the Looking Glass

This novel has enough elements of chick lit that it could fool you until you actually read it -- young single woman protagonist, ex-boyfriend troubles, friends to talk about the ex with, and the quirky touch of the late Walter Kupau's involvement. But it's not chick lit; it's something richer and stranger. A bit of magical realism, perhaps, in the way that vanished people and places and supernatural elements are part of the present, but it's not quite like anything else. It's eminently readable, though, so give it a try.

An overlooked gem

For reasons to be explained, I expected not to like "The Ghost of Walter Kupau." However, I liked it very much. Walter Kupau was a real person, executive secretary (that is, president/dictator, using the faux-modest terminology of 1930s collectivist nomenclature) of the Hawaii carpenters union. He was much admired by people who admired him, and rightly feared by those who didn't. Lori Aquino was general counsel to the union, though she came too late to be involved in the terrorism that got Kupau sent to the federal penitentiary. In law, he went for perjury, not terrorism. Aquino gets the prison sentence onto the first page of her novel, but although she intends to present a portrait of a tough-talking, tough-acting (but lovable) union boss, she ducks the real character of the carpenters union during its worst period. That's why I expected to dislike the novel. I disliked Walter Kupau the live person. However, by the time this book starts, Kupau is dead, a ghost. The only other novel I know where the protagonist is dead from the beginning is Michael Frayn's "Sweet Dreams," unless you want to count Stoker's "Dracula." A young Filpina lawyer needs help with a former boyfriend. Her old boss seems the right person/ghost to take care of things. In the end, he does. This is such a fresh, quirky novel that to tell more of the plot would spoil it. The format allows Walter to step forward every few chapters to talk about his view of life and love. Another thing I like about Aquino's writing is that she has an authentic feel for being in Hawaii, without laying the local color on too thick, like almost everyone else. This is the best novel of local color set in Hawaii that I have read since Kathleen Tyau's "A Little Too Much is Enough." But "The Ghost of Walter Kupau" is not like any other Hawaii novel, or any other novel that I have ever read.