February 25, 2008 at 6:06 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Fiction and Literature, World Literature, Young Adult Literature
21. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai (YA) 274 p.
Amrith is a kind, sheltered fourteen-year-old living in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Raised by his mother’s childhood friend, Auntie Bundle, and her husband, Uncle Lucky, after his parents’ deaths, he has no blood relations of his own, and no close friends. That changes when his Canadian cousin Niresh arrives for a visit, and the two boys become close.
As usual, Shyam Selvadurai draws a wonderful portrait of Sri Lanka, this time of Colombo in August, 1980. Amrith is a very charming character, polite and intelligent.
I bought an ARC of this book without realizing it. It’s the first time I’ve ever read one, so I was pleased to discover only a few errors, mostly missing words and a few mistaken words (like “whetted” for “vetted”.)
I’ve always enjoyed Shyam Selvadurai’s writing, so I wasn’t surprised to find myself absorbed in Swimming in the Monsoon Sea. It was Selvadurai’s first young adult novel, though, and it’s nice to see that he made the transition from adult to YA fiction without any signs of difficulty.
Pages read: 6,472
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Shyam Selvadurai, What's in a Name?, World Lit Challenge II
July 9, 2007 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Fiction and Literature, Historical Fiction, World Literature
61. Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai (Historical Fiction) 386 p.
World Lit Challenge: Sri Lanka
Cinnamon Gardens is Shyam Selvadurai’s second novel, set in 1920’s Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), a country still under British colonial rule. The book narrates one year from the lives of members of a wealthy Tamil family living in Cinnamon Gardens, one of Colombo’s most affluent suburbs. Particularly two of its members: Annalukshmi, a young teacher unsure of whether she is willing to reject all offers of marriage in order to continue in her beloved profession, and her uncle Balendran, who himself gave up his lover and married in order to please his father.
On a two-week school trip to Ghana in 2002, plagued by nightly panic attacks caused by homesickness and a few bad memories, I soon became desperate for books that would take my mind off my surroundings for a while. Since we each brought only one large backpack, I couldn’t have brought enough books for the trip even if I’d known how much I would need them. One of the hotels we stayed in had a small number of books left by previous guests, but the selection was unfortunate considering my state of mind.
Luckily for me, one of the teachers and another student had each brought some lighter fare, which helped me get through the few days. Philip K. Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon and Ubik were nicely distracting, but it was Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy that I really fell in love with on that trip. I have no idea if it would have made as deep an impression on me if the circumstances had been different, but it might have. It was one of the first books I ever read with a gay protagonist, and certainly the first outside of genre fiction. A contemporary novel set in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Funny Boy was a revelation in a number of ways.
It’s taken me a surprisingly long time to get around to reading Cinnamon Gardens, which I bought used two or three years ago. I enjoyed it enormously. It was the way the book ended that pleased me the most, but I won’t get into that. The novel is populated with very sympathetic, believable characters, many of whom I would be pleased to encounter in real life. Family members who didn’t always understand each other but had affection and respect for each other anyway lent the story a sharp realism. Descriptions of Colombo under the British were many and vivid, without ever becoming tedious or intrusive. I was especially fond of the two main characters, Annalukshmi and Balendran, and I was sad to leave them when the book ended. The story doesn’t really invite a sequel, but I wish there was one anyway.
Books read: 61/100 (61%)
Pages read: 18,105/25,000 (72%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Shyam Selvadurai, World Lit Challenge
