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What a beautiful, but also incredibly sad book; a work of art that exemplifies the term "brutiful". Although this book had previously been on my radar, it was a recommendation from a friend—a fellow Scarberian (thanks, Allie!)—that prompted me to bump it to the top of my TBR. As such, I dove in completely blind, with no notion of the plot or what would await me within its pages. I wasn't fully prepared for the devastating gut punch that it delivered, and while I'm not sorry to have read it, it did hurt my heart and was not at all soothing in the way one might hope that a book set in the place of one's own childhood might be as it is a colorful, yet crushing, depiction of home. It's a confronting novel, with sharp edges and ugliness, but a tender heart beats at its core and is what pulled me along. The writing was evocative and exciting, and I was impressed (as others have mentioned) with how much story—how much life—Chariandy is able to convey with so few pages; how he manages to be both succinct and epic at the same time is nothing short of wizardry.