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Swimming in the Monsoon Sea
| Title | Swimming in the Monsoon Sea |
| Writer | |
| Date | 2024-10-12 01:45:11 |
| Type | |
| Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life “before,” when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith’s holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school’s production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky’s tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith’s ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy. Othello, with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed.Shyam Selvadurai’s brilliant novels, Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens, have garnered him international acclaim. In this, his first young adult novel, he explores first love with clarity, humor and compassion.
Review
"Swimming in the Monsoon Sea" is about Amrith, a fourteen year boy who has a passion for acting, and has faced terrible tragedy by losing his parents at the age of seven. He has been living with his aunt's family (his mom's close friend) ever since. Now his holiday plans are beggining to look dull and unpromising, until his Canadian uncle and cousin come to visit. This book shares a theme with Shakespeare's Othello, a play that revolves around disastrous jealousy. The story takes place in Sri Lanka, the time being 1980."Swimming in the Monsoon Sea" was very different than other GLBT YA fiction I've read so far. Instead of centering the story completely around that aspect of Amrith and including sexual stuff like I've read before, this book made the transition subtle and the author held a certain grace to his character's coming of age. However, while his description of the scenery and culture of Sri Lanka was intriguing, I think it maybe took a way a little too much from the actual story itself. Some of the plot didn't seem developed to its full potential, so in order for me to have given the book four stars, I would've wanted to see a little more development of the story take place.
