Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

By Shyam Selvadurai

Amrith comes to terms with his sexuality in this sweeping coming-of-age story set against the stormy backdrop of monsoon season in 1980s Sri Lanka. For fans of Call Me By Your Name.

Shyam Selvadurai’s brilliant novels, Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens, have garnered him international acclaim. In his first young adult novel, he explores first love with clarity, humor and compassion.
 
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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781551997209

Shyam Selvadurai

Shyam Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Funny Boy, his first novel, won the W.H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award in the United States. He is the author of Cinnamon Gardens and Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, and the editor of an anthology, Story-wallah! A Celebration of South Asian Fiction. His books have been published in the United States, United Kingdom, and India, and in translation.

Reviews for Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

[booksonshelves · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This utterly beautiful novel tells us the story of when 14 year old Amrith meets his cousin for the first time. Set in the 1980s during the monsoon season in Sri Lanka, this is a tale about family, friendship, sexuality, identity, loyalty, and first love. Selvadurai captures the atmosphere of a time and place perfectly and writes with heartbreaking honesty.

[meggyweg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The dust jacket makes it seem like this novel is just about a boy falling in love with another boy, but really, Amrith's love for Niresh is only peripheral to the plot. More important is Amrith's reconciling his feelings about his dead parents and the trouble in their families, and his adoptive parents and sisters, who he both loves and hates. All the main characters in the story are fully real, and Amrith's growing maturity is well portrayed.However, this book did have some flaws. It was overly didactic -- obviously written for a Western audience that had no notion of Sri Lankan life, there was a little too much explaining about customs and architecture and the weather. The other, bigger problem (in my mind) is that way too much was told rather than shown, particularly about Amrith's feelings. It was as if the author didn't trust the reader to draw the correct conclusions and had to spoon-feed them everything.I would give this book a B, and might be tempted to pick up more of this author's work in the future. I hope he works out his showing-telling problem.

[callmecayce · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea is another partly heartbreaking story of first loves. Unlike previous young adult stories about gay young men, Selvadurai's novel is different. The story takes place in Sri Lanka, a place where (at least in the 80s, when the novel takes place) homosexuality is not something that's common or even talked about. Amrith, a 14 year old boy, lives with his adoptive parents. His past is complicated and sad, but we don't find out the details until near the end of the novel. And in many ways, this is one of strongest coming of age novels I've read recently. In many of them, the boys have already come to terms with being gay, but Amrith doesn't even understand what's going on in his head. He doesn't even realize how he feels until his long lost cousin from Canada appears in his life. Up until we meet Amrith's cousin, Niresh, the only things he cares about are not thinking about his mother's death and acting. He desperately wants to be in the school production of Othello -- and manages to win the part of Desdemona (a part he covets, after winning an award for his acting as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet). But the Niresh shows up, and Amrith's world is shaken up. The world Selvadurai creates is both believable and emotionally driven. We follow Amrith as he struggles with his friendship with Niresh, slowly falling in love, and his relationships with his family (adoptive parents and sisters). Selvadurai allows us to watch as Amrith is torn apart, through his love of Niresh, mourning of his mother and love of acting and then how he must find a way to put himself back together.As I was reading, I kept waiting for something to happen and then when it did, it was beautiful and heartbreaking. This novel is not like the majority of YA gay fiction I've read, there's no implied sex, no reciprocation of feelings. Instead, it's a story of love and loss, because when your first love with is your straight cousin, there's no way it can work out. But don't let that stop you from reading. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea is so much more than just that storyline. Selvadurai is a brilliant story teller and I can't wait to read more of his books.

[peonygoat_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amrith, who lives with his adopted family, comes to realize he’s different as he begins to observe the people around him. He realizes he has strong feelings for his male cousin Niresh who is visiting from Canada.