Life in Vice City

“Yakudoshi: Age of Calamity”

Chris McKinney

Mutual Publishing, $13.95

For almost 20 years and through six previous novels, Hawaii author Chris McKinney has shown us the scarred underbelly of Honolulu, subverting popular stereotypes of paradise with heartbreaking characters in dire situations. If McKinney’s earlier books are snapshots and portraits of a darker Hawaii, then his new novel, “Yakudoshi: Age of Calamity,” is its drunken selfie. It’s Honolulu in neon, where he expertly captures the restless energy of a city growing and changing faster than it can sustain and a man struggling to catch up.

Yakudoshi, in Japanese tradition, is a set of critical years in a person’s life when the potential for danger and opportunity exists.

Bruce Blanc, the hero, has less-than-limited resources and a ton of emotional baggage as he’s about to turn 41. Back on the streets of Honolulu after a nine-year incarceration, he finds that the gentrification of Hawaii hasn’t just changed the landscape, but the nightlife and crime world as well.

“It’s a world where everyone wants to get better stuff. From phones, to cars, to computers, to lovers, everyone wants an upgrade,” he reflects.

Bruce falls back into a lifestyle of parties and declining drugs until he finds out that the son he has never met, born while he was in prison, has gone missing and might be dead. He takes on drug lords, crooked cops and social media searching for his kid and his own redemption. Along the way he faces the demons of his past and realizes that he’s the cause of his own calamity.

McKinney’s writing in “Yakudoshi” is electric and demonstrates a talent for original voice and tight pacing. The story is divided into three parts with short chapters told by Bruce in a first-person narrative that’s like a steel pipe to the chest: profane and anything but subtle. He’s honest and blunt in a world where appearances are everything and nothing and no one is what they seem.

This place and the people are trying to be something they’re not. Maybe that’s the drug thing. Maybe that’s the drinking thing. … Instagram. Match.com. It’s like you’re telling everyone a fairytale version of what your life is.

While dark and penetrating, McKinney’s vision is also comic: Bruce sums up this poser world as one giant padded bra.

Surreal scenes that take place entirely in Bruce’s mind reflect his many emotional scars, which trip up his responses to people and events and the changes he’s striving to make.

“I wish I could turn off my crazy. I wish I could channel it. … But I figure I know why I do it, why I let my mind run wild. It’s so I don’t obsess over the things I’ve done, the things people done to me, and the things I’m gonna do,” he reflects.

While Bruce sometimes waxes sentimental, “Yakudoshi” is not. Critical of contemporary Honolulu as a whole, the novel doesn’t indulge in misplaced nostalgia for the way things used to be. It’s a story that shows how clarity can come from chaos and buried love can be brought back to life.

McKinney’s characters are often tortured by their past, their parents and their poor choices. Bruce is no different, but readers will be surprised to find maturity and weary wisdom developing in this narrative of a man in flux, figuring out how to make things right and move forward while pulling the weight of the past.

“Yakudoshi” holds up a mirror to all of us, whatever our walk of life. It’s a must-read revelation.