A review by jennylimmy
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam

3.0

Knowing absolutely nothing about the Sri Lankan civil war, I both appreciated and was somewhat thrown by the narrator’s commitment to explaining context. It doesn’t make a ton of sense dramatically, because why would he provide background information for himself? And he is certainly talking to himself throughout; a little too much so. The parts about his family and his grandmother’s caretaker are great; his musings about his ex-girlfriend are dull. The book spends too much time navel-gazing to make up for its kernels of youthful wisdom.