SOURCE: A review of Hula, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXI, No. 20, October 15, 1993, p. 1291.

[In the following favorable review, written prior to the publication of Hula, the critic relates the plot of the novel.]

[Lisa Shea's Hula is a tiny], lucid first novel about two Lisa Shea

In a wry but deadpan voice, the younger of two sisters (the older is getting breasts) narrates the events of the summers of 1964 and 1965, when the girls' parents at last split up. Mother teaches dance at a local studio, and father, with a shiny metal plate in the back of his head ("My mother says something happened to our father in the war but my sister says he is just mean"), hangs around the house and yard in a state of barely suppressed rage, often...