Whirlaway - Softcover

Adrift somewhere amidst this seemingly horizonless ocean of alcohol, drugs and unwashed sex is a minor adventure about two alcoholic losers who scheme to get rich in tourist-glutted Hawaii. Narrator Martin and self-styled sailor Jack con a high-rolling, cocaine-addicted San Francisco brain surgeon into buying Whirlaway, a 52-foot racing yacht, and joining them in a yacht-chartering operation that takes them throughout the Hawaiian islands. Impaired by a herky-jerky prose style that he apparently intends to pass for hip, first-novelist Wintner (Snorkel Bob's Reality Guide to Hawaii) fails to evoke any real sense of the territory; moreover, his pages are overpopulated with airhead females whose main mission in life seems to be to relieve the potentially debilitating sexual tensions of an ill-assorted cast of perverted male wharf rats. Vivid passages depicting harrowing open-sea crossings help matters somewhat, as do some interesting, albeit overdetailed, descriptions of arduous boat repairs-but not even the dead-on cameos of mainsider "normals" can offset the heroes' vacuous musings about cosmic meaning and their apparently unquenchable yearning for the sleaziest that money can buy. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.