First off, let me admit that I am slightly biased when writing this review - for I happen to be a big fan of all of Theroux's travel books, and have lived in Hawaii.
I personnaly find travel writing best when someone "tells it like it is", and won't romantacise a tired cliche to feed a preconceived fantasy of what a place should be like. I'd rather go to a museum with someone who says "Man, that's a load of (expletive of your choice) hanging there" rather than seeking a deeper sense or pseudo-intellectual stimulation in the tyre tracks cast in plaster adorning the wall (an actual experience, I must add...).
That said, this is not a travel book; but rather a novel with a narrator many can relate to, and a cast of characters so colourful that you are caught between wanting to know them personally and being thankful you don't. However, as a longtime Honolulu resident who now lives in Europe, I am bound to have an opinion different to those who have never been to Hawaii (as well as to those who go there two weeks a year every year and say things like "I know Waikiki like the back of my hand..."). The truth is that this book is closer to reality than any grass skirt-luau-surfs up-hang loose film or book you will ever see. I worked in the hotel industry there for 6 years, and a large part of those years in a hotel like Hotel Honolulu. From the gambling housekeepers, to the North Shore prole-riche there is an accuracy in the characters you won't find in a novel from someone who "just visited" the 50th state. The dialect is the real thing (who but a true native or observant resident would notice things in local pidgin like the long 's' in front of 'stressed'- a word overused daily in Hawaii - something Theroux also notices).
If you want to keep your "lovely hula hands" image of Hawaii, and still believe that everyone (even those not on a package tour) disembarking a plane get a lei around their neck - stick to your hotel vouchers and watch those Elvis movies. I love Hawaii, and it's in every fibre of my body for the last decade of living away from it (her?) and will be until I return; but the vivid truth of both sides needs to be seen to get a picture that's not all Don Ho. In a work of brilliant fiction, Theroux has laid aside the guide book, and opened the soul of the real "Hawaii nei".