SarahJanet's Books

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

A book by Shyam Selvadurai, for my YA Book Group.

This book is the story of a Sri Lankan boy whose Canadian cousin comes to visit him, throwing his life into somewhat of a tailspin. It was chosen in conjunction with Maya Running, and there are distinct and obvious comparisons.

This book, however, was much better. First of all, it didn't suffer from the unclear genre situation - it set itself up to be one kind of book and stayed that type of book throughout. Secondly, the characters were given much more depth. The Canadian cousin could have been fleshed out a little more, but Amrith, the main character, is pretty 3-dimensional and quite sympathetic.

The story is relatively simple - over the course of a visit from a cousin he'd never met, Amrith comes to some conclusions about himself and discovers that he's gay. Of course, being that this is set in Sri Lanka, it's a significantly more complicated situation than that.

That's the basic crux of the story - there are other details but they are mostly incidental to the main concept. There some interesting side notes about family, friends, the nature of love, etc, but overall it's a simple story that's told quite well. (I shouldn't say simple because that makes it sound like it's this easy thing that's dealt with, and it isn't. But it's told in an uncomplicated fashion.)

Good book, and could lead to good discussions. It was also a very interesting look at Sri Lankan culture, which is not one I'm very familiar with.

posted by SarahJanet @ 6:28 PM