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dunnadam's review against another edition
4.0
A real whirlwind of a novel, the latest from Canadian author Shyam Selvadurai packs in a lot of emotion, while moving finely over the course of the life of an immigrant, caught between the land he grew up in and the world in which he lives.
The novel starts in Sri Lanka and soon vividly portrays the 1983 conflict between the Tamils and the majority Sinhalese, leaving the narrator, Shivan, and his family desperate for escape. They immigrate to Canada, but soon find life is not all it could be there, either. The internal struggle of the immigrant is portrayed well, feeling homesick for a place that is no longer home.
In one vivid scene, Shivan walks with his mother to buy groceries on the weekend, a cold fifteen minute walk in suburbia to the local Bridlewood Mall. Who among us cannot relate to the sterile coldness of the impoverished Bridlewood Mall?
Shivan finds refuge in the eclectic Toronto neighbourhood of Queen West and in the city’s burgeoning gay movement. One of his first contacts is a counselor who tells him not to go to the gay village that it’s full of bitter queens with only one thing on their minds, and who then in turn seduces him. Hypocrisy, Canadian style.
Finding his life in Canada intolerable, Shivan travels back to Sri Lanka with devastating consequences that really set the book in motion. From this point on, I couldn’t put it down. As a friend of Shivan’s tells him “You wanted poor old Sri Lanka to love and accept the person you became in Canada. But it cannot.”
These demons haunt Shivan, forcing him to relive old mistakes. The novel centres a lot on reincarnation and cycles of life, and Shivan is living his own cycle, one he will grow to find not all that different from that of his ancestors.
After talking about his struggles with a partner, Shivan talks of his mother:
"I... I don't want you to think my mother is some truly horrid person," I said, wanting to distance myself now from my impulsive confession. "She has come around to accepting who I am."
"No, no, Shivan," he assured me, "she's just human."
This is the message of this book, vividly told. We’re all human, we all have perspectives, we all make mistakes. The book is interwoven with fantastic old Buddhist stories, like the one in the title about the hungry ghosts. Greedy in this life, they are doomed in the next, with big bellies for food but mouths the size of the eye of a needle, cursed to forever be in want.
The message in many of these stories is forgiveness; that we need to forgive others, that we need to forgive ourselves most of all. I was a little disappointed that Shivan’s journey to peace did not come full circle before the end of the book, but perhaps that’s part of life too. That there is no happy ending, or closing of the circle. Rather there’s motions we make to set things right, and the trust that we will get through.
The novel starts in Sri Lanka and soon vividly portrays the 1983 conflict between the Tamils and the majority Sinhalese, leaving the narrator, Shivan, and his family desperate for escape. They immigrate to Canada, but soon find life is not all it could be there, either. The internal struggle of the immigrant is portrayed well, feeling homesick for a place that is no longer home.
In one vivid scene, Shivan walks with his mother to buy groceries on the weekend, a cold fifteen minute walk in suburbia to the local Bridlewood Mall. Who among us cannot relate to the sterile coldness of the impoverished Bridlewood Mall?
Shivan finds refuge in the eclectic Toronto neighbourhood of Queen West and in the city’s burgeoning gay movement. One of his first contacts is a counselor who tells him not to go to the gay village that it’s full of bitter queens with only one thing on their minds, and who then in turn seduces him. Hypocrisy, Canadian style.
Finding his life in Canada intolerable, Shivan travels back to Sri Lanka with devastating consequences that really set the book in motion. From this point on, I couldn’t put it down. As a friend of Shivan’s tells him “You wanted poor old Sri Lanka to love and accept the person you became in Canada. But it cannot.”
These demons haunt Shivan, forcing him to relive old mistakes. The novel centres a lot on reincarnation and cycles of life, and Shivan is living his own cycle, one he will grow to find not all that different from that of his ancestors.
After talking about his struggles with a partner, Shivan talks of his mother:
"I... I don't want you to think my mother is some truly horrid person," I said, wanting to distance myself now from my impulsive confession. "She has come around to accepting who I am."
"No, no, Shivan," he assured me, "she's just human."
This is the message of this book, vividly told. We’re all human, we all have perspectives, we all make mistakes. The book is interwoven with fantastic old Buddhist stories, like the one in the title about the hungry ghosts. Greedy in this life, they are doomed in the next, with big bellies for food but mouths the size of the eye of a needle, cursed to forever be in want.
The message in many of these stories is forgiveness; that we need to forgive others, that we need to forgive ourselves most of all. I was a little disappointed that Shivan’s journey to peace did not come full circle before the end of the book, but perhaps that’s part of life too. That there is no happy ending, or closing of the circle. Rather there’s motions we make to set things right, and the trust that we will get through.
midici's review against another edition
3.0
I'm not always a fan of family dramas, but this story goes beyond that. Shivan's story ties together the family dynamics through the history and politics of Sri Lanka, and the ways in which each character struggles to deal with immigrating to Canada. The prose is beautiful, descriptive and thorough.
chilks's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
jpsiphonophorae's review against another edition
5.0
Sri Lankan lit never misses. I adored Cinnamon Gardens but this is by far my favorite Selvadurai piece. Honestly it’s neck and neck with Seven Moons especially considering they’re sort of two sides of the same coin. I’ve never had a book title strike me the way this one did. Honestly insane. Devastatingly beautiful, heartbreakingly hopeful.
millennial_dandy's review against another edition
4.0
Full disclosure: I am a Shyam Selvadurai stan, and so reviewing one of his works objectively is quite impossible.
As in his debut novel 'Funny Boy,' Selvadurai does a deep-dive into the struggle of being a young gay man in a society in the midst of roiling change and violence.
Family and identity (and the ways in which they entertwine) are at the forefront of 'The Hungry Ghosts' just as in 'Funny Boy,' and in some ways, 'Hungry Ghosts' seems to be its sequal.
At the end of 'Funny Boy' the protagonist is poised to flee from Sri Lanka to Canada with his family, and in 'The Hungry Ghosts' much of the story takes place in Canada after a mother and her teenage children flee to Toronto as Tamil refugees.
There is so much texture to this novel, it's hard to choose one particular thread to follow when reviewing it. The simplest way to whittle down what exactly the story is to say that it's about the intersections within a person's identity and how those intersections can be incredibly painful when they rub up against each other as a person tries to self-actualize.
Protagonist Shivan is half Tamil and half Sinhalese, he's gay, he's the favorite of his family's powerful matriarch, later on he's an immigrant, and in Canada he also has the classifciation of 'non-white' foisted on him. And all of these different 'hats' he wears throughout his life come with certain trade-offs.
In Sri-Lanka, being half-Tamil places him in a potential position of marginalization, and being gay even more so. But, because of the protection granted him by his grandmother, an incredibly successful real-estate developer and someone with connections to a local mafia-style leader, he is afforded a very easy path to success. However, that easy path increasingly alienates him from his mother and sister, and comes at the additional cost of being able to pursue an open relationship with his boyfriend.
In Canada, he is free of the corruptive influence of his grandmother, and in a better position to live more openly as a gay man, but at the cost of the high-class lifestyle he enjoyed in Sri Lanka. Additionally, in Canada, because he is classified as 'non-white' he is subjected to racism in his day to day life, and rejection within the local queer community. To combat his lonliness, he falls into a series of unhealthy relationships.
When it finally seems that he's found a way to balance his various identities and form a life he's satisfied with (even if he had to sacrifice a relationship with his family for it), a tragedy from his past threatens to burn it all down.
Reading 'The Hungry Ghosts' gives readers such rich insight into what Sri Lanka was like in the 80s, a really solid grounding in the multitude of conflicts going on in the country at the time and how they fed into each other. At its heart, it's a very poignant portrait of a family in crisis, and even manages on top of that to deftly explore the landscape of immigration and integration.
Selvadurai seems to understand that his work is in large part being consumed by a non-Sri Lankan audience (specifically by a white, western audience), and is careful to provide context where necessary, though never in a way that takes one out of the reading experience.
All this to say nothing of the man's writing chops. By god, can Shyam Selvadurai write. His descriptive writing is immaculate. Just as in 'Funny Boy' he has such good instincts for how to integrate tactile details into his scenes to build atmosphere and to set tone. And it's never in a cartoony 'it was a dark and stormy night' sort of way. It's in the fabric of the places Shivan takes us; in the smells, the textures, his perceptions.
When Shivan's family first arrives in Canada our focus is drawn to the most obvious differences: the winter weather they've never experienced, the style of the architecture. But the longer they're there, and the more Shivan's initial rosy optimism about the move is beaten down by his realizations of the new limitations he faces, he starts to notice the garbage kicked off to the sides of the roads, how run-down the house they're living in is (even though when they first arrive he and his family are impressed by and proud of their new home). And again, it's all very, very subtle.
A real triumph for Selvadurai, and a great place to start if you've never read one of his books.
As in his debut novel 'Funny Boy,' Selvadurai does a deep-dive into the struggle of being a young gay man in a society in the midst of roiling change and violence.
Family and identity (and the ways in which they entertwine) are at the forefront of 'The Hungry Ghosts' just as in 'Funny Boy,' and in some ways, 'Hungry Ghosts' seems to be its sequal.
At the end of 'Funny Boy' the protagonist is poised to flee from Sri Lanka to Canada with his family, and in 'The Hungry Ghosts' much of the story takes place in Canada after a mother and her teenage children flee to Toronto as Tamil refugees.
There is so much texture to this novel, it's hard to choose one particular thread to follow when reviewing it. The simplest way to whittle down what exactly the story is to say that it's about the intersections within a person's identity and how those intersections can be incredibly painful when they rub up against each other as a person tries to self-actualize.
Protagonist Shivan is half Tamil and half Sinhalese, he's gay, he's the favorite of his family's powerful matriarch, later on he's an immigrant, and in Canada he also has the classifciation of 'non-white' foisted on him. And all of these different 'hats' he wears throughout his life come with certain trade-offs.
In Sri-Lanka, being half-Tamil places him in a potential position of marginalization, and being gay even more so. But, because of the protection granted him by his grandmother, an incredibly successful real-estate developer and someone with connections to a local mafia-style leader, he is afforded a very easy path to success. However, that easy path increasingly alienates him from his mother and sister, and comes at the additional cost of being able to pursue an open relationship with his boyfriend.
In Canada, he is free of the corruptive influence of his grandmother, and in a better position to live more openly as a gay man, but at the cost of the high-class lifestyle he enjoyed in Sri Lanka. Additionally, in Canada, because he is classified as 'non-white' he is subjected to racism in his day to day life, and rejection within the local queer community. To combat his lonliness, he falls into a series of unhealthy relationships.
When it finally seems that he's found a way to balance his various identities and form a life he's satisfied with (even if he had to sacrifice a relationship with his family for it), a tragedy from his past threatens to burn it all down.
Reading 'The Hungry Ghosts' gives readers such rich insight into what Sri Lanka was like in the 80s, a really solid grounding in the multitude of conflicts going on in the country at the time and how they fed into each other. At its heart, it's a very poignant portrait of a family in crisis, and even manages on top of that to deftly explore the landscape of immigration and integration.
Selvadurai seems to understand that his work is in large part being consumed by a non-Sri Lankan audience (specifically by a white, western audience), and is careful to provide context where necessary, though never in a way that takes one out of the reading experience.
All this to say nothing of the man's writing chops. By god, can Shyam Selvadurai write. His descriptive writing is immaculate. Just as in 'Funny Boy' he has such good instincts for how to integrate tactile details into his scenes to build atmosphere and to set tone. And it's never in a cartoony 'it was a dark and stormy night' sort of way. It's in the fabric of the places Shivan takes us; in the smells, the textures, his perceptions.
When Shivan's family first arrives in Canada our focus is drawn to the most obvious differences: the winter weather they've never experienced, the style of the architecture. But the longer they're there, and the more Shivan's initial rosy optimism about the move is beaten down by his realizations of the new limitations he faces, he starts to notice the garbage kicked off to the sides of the roads, how run-down the house they're living in is (even though when they first arrive he and his family are impressed by and proud of their new home). And again, it's all very, very subtle.
A real triumph for Selvadurai, and a great place to start if you've never read one of his books.
mattcowardgibbs's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
raheli17's review
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
siphonophorae's review against another edition
5.0
Sri Lankan lit never misses. I adored Cinnamon Gardens but this is by far my favorite Selvadurai piece. Honestly it’s neck and neck with Seven Moons especially considering they’re sort of two sides of the same coin. I’ve never had a book title strike me the way this one did. Honestly insane. Devastatingly beautiful, heartbreakingly hopeful.