Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam SelvaduraiTundra Books, 2005

At first, this book seemed too slow, too flat, but after a few chapters, I was entranced. Selvadurai’s descriptions of Sri Lanka, its streets and architecture and its climate, its trees and birds and foods, are precise and vivid, and then there’s also the sense of history, both personal history and the colonial legacy of the place. The characters, true to adolescent life, aren’t always likeable: but there’s depth in their prickliness, and they’re appealingly perceptive, figuring things out as they go along, learning acceptance and how, as the epigraph from Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin puts it, “to say Yes to life.”