I heard about
The Descendants because of the film adaption
starring George Clooney that was advertised a lot of TV. My grandma
bought the DVD and gave it to my family as an Easter present and I
decided to watch it with my good friend Kelly. The film was good and I
decided it would be a pretty cool book to read. I don't know why but
even though I see film adaptions, I can't usually go without reading the
books even though I know what is going to happen. There is just
something unique that happens when you read a book that can't be
explained. Same can be said for movies of course, but I prefer the
books. :)
The Descendants is about a man named Matt King who's
wife is in a coma after a water accident. Matt has just found out that
his wife is not going to wake up and now has to tell his two daughters
and everyone close to him so they can say their goodbyes. This is the
same time his oldest daughter decides to tell him that his wife has been
cheating on him. Matt then decides to go on a journey with his
daughters and his oldest daughter's friend named Sid to hunt his wife's
lover down while he also goes on a journey of self-discovery. Kinda sounds cheesy when I put it that way but it's actually quite lovely.
Throughout this entire process Matt also feels the pressure from his
family to sign an important document which will give away acres of land
and give him and his cousins big bucks.
One thing I loved
about this book was the theme of acceptance and forgiveness. Throughout
the book Matt constantly struggles with his two daughters and their
ragging personalities. He tries to figure them out but learns he will
never be able to do so if he doesn't kneel down to a personal level.
His first born constantly sends insults to her dying mother's way yet
Matt, while comforted, corrects her and tells her to not insult her
mother. He knows what his wife did is wrong but he doesn't want to give
his daughters a bad image of their mom (even though his oldest daughter
doesn't have much of a chance with that now). The book also has an
underlying theme of tranquility and not letting material things cloud
our judgement. Matt struggles when thinking about the land he has to
sign away and how big of a commitment it would be to do so or not do
so. He wants his daughters to grow up in a world that is good and fair
and he doesn't want to be a negative example towards that. While these
are many good points to the novel, there was one thing that I found
extremely annoying: the dialogue! The dialogue was so unrealistic and
so cheesy at times that I could barely stand it. The movie basically
copies the dialogue word for word and while usually I would praise this
tactic, I wish they would have changed it. Sometimes the dialogue is
really raw and other times I wonder how anyone would buy such a
sentence. It just annoyed me to no end.
Overall, I liked the book and recommend it for everyone to read. It was really good. I give it
4 out of 5 stars.
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