Suncatcher

by Romesh Gunesekera

Overview

The internationally celebrated (and Booker Prize–shortlisted) author returns with a dazzling coming-of-age story set in post-independence Sri Lanka

"A master storyteller."
—The New York Times

Ceylon is on the brink of change. But young Kairo is at loose ends. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat, and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo's hardworking mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyist father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret bets on horse races in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick through secondhand westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream.

Then he meets the magnetic teenage Jay, and his whole world is turned inside out.

A budding naturalist and a born rebel, Jay keeps fish and traps birds for an aviary he is building in the garden of his grand home. As Jay guides Kairo from the realm of make-believe into one of hunting guns and fast cars and introduces him to a girl— Niromi—Kairo begins to understand the price of privilege and embarks on a journey of devastating consequence.

Taut and luminous, graceful and wild, Suncatcher is a poignant coming-of-age novel about difficult friendships and sudden awakenings set among the tumult of 1960s Sri Lanka, that confirms Gunesekera's status as one of today's most lyrical writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620975602
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	04/07/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	411 KB

About the Author

Romesh Gunesekera is the author of Monkfish Moon, Reef, The Sandglass, The Match, and Noontide Toll. He grew up in Sri Lanka and the Philippines and now lives in London.

Romesh Gunesekera is the author of Suncatcher, Monkfish Moon, Reef, The Sandglass, The Match, and Noontide Toll (all published by The New Press). He grew up in Sri Lanka and the Philippines and now lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

01/13/2020

Gunesekera’s engrossing coming-of-age tale (after Noon Tide Toll) explores the porous class boundaries in 1960s Ceylon. After schools close in the city of Columbo due to government upheaval, preteen Kairo fills his time hanging out with an older, enigmatic wealthy boy named Jay. Kairo is intrigued by Jay’s aquariums and aviary, and after watching a bird take flight, he muses on the time he’d spent “waiting for someone like Jay to turn up and switch on the lights.” As Kairo spends more time with Jay and Jay’s uncle Elvin, who considers himself a refined gentleman and is the owner of an extensive gun collection and numerous cars, Jay introduces Kairo to fishing and hunting, and the younger boy begins identifying with Jay’s grand lifestyle. In addition, Kairo is fascinated by Jay’s beautiful mother, who drinks in the daytime and has an antagonistic relationship with Jay’s father. As Jay’s family falls apart and Jay becomes despondent over the disappearance of their favorite bird, Kairo realizes that while his own family lacks the wealth and eccentricity of Jay’s family, their stability is worth appreciating. Gunesekera successfully captures an adolescent’s cravings for a wealthy lifestyle and the ensuing loss of innocence in the face of tumult. This will move readers. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Suncatcher:

"As a coming-of-age novel, Suncatcher is memorable and sometimes brilliant in its ability to map the tensions between leader and follower, the arc and trajectory of boys trying so impatiently to become men. This is also a wise and poignant portrait of a country—Ceylon before it became Sri Lanka—caught in the moment before it loses its innocence."
—Financial Times

"Gunesekera's prose is lush yet luminously clear, and Kairo—as he deciphers the world around him and his place in that world—is the perfect guide to the book's turbulent setting."
—Boston Globe

"An enchanting novel. . . . [It] calls to mind the early chapters of Brideshead Revisited . . . [and offers a] magical evocation of a world where it seems that everything should remain as it is, while you know sadly, that it can't and won't."
—Allan Massie, The Scotsman

"A gripping novel about [a] country on the brink. . . . Harking back to the 1960s in a period piece suffused with foreboding, Gunesekera captures the first rumblings of the cataclysm."
—Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times (London)

"[An] engrossing coming-of-age tale. . . . Gunesekera successfully captures an adolescent's cravings for a wealthy lifestyle and the ensuing loss of innocence in the face of tumult. This will move readers."
—Publishers Weekly

"A lyrical and evocative portrait of a Sri Lankan boyhood friendship and the life lessons that came with it."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Gunesekera's latest is an entrancing examination of how we are marked by our earliest friendships and how‚ even in the closest relationships‚ it is difficult to know if those we love are capable of loving us back."
—Booklist

From the Publisher

2019-11-11
A young boy comes of age against a backdrop of class conflict and political unrest in 1960s Sri Lanka.

Gunesekera (Noontide Toll, 2014, etc.) sets his latest in Sri Lanka in 1964—then known as Ceylon—as uncertainty looms for the fledgling democracy and ethnic Sinhalese nationalism is on the rise. In the novel's opening pages, narrator Kairo meets Jay, two boys riding their bikes in a church parking lot in the capital city of Colombo. Charismatic Jay challenges Kairo to a race, and the dynamic of their brief boyhood friendship is established: "I needed a guide, a hero, illumination," Kairo explains. "Jay, I now know, needed an acolyte." The middle-class son of a disillusioned socialist father in the Labour Department and a mother who works at Radio Ceylon, Kairo drifts in a dream world of pulp Western comics until he is swept into Jay's glamorous orbit (the Gatsby echo must be intentional). Jay's family home is grand enough to have a name, Casa Lihiniya; his mother, Sonya, drifts about in a caftan like a film star, and his uncle Elvin maintains a fleet of cars and runs a coconut estate in the countryside. Jay himself collects fish in tanks and birds in a backyard aviary. A vivid set piece takes the boys to Elvin's estate, where a game of Cowboys and Indians, played with the son of an estate laborer, turns ugly and Kairo has his first intimations of class privilege: "I could see how easily [Jay] could slip into his uncle's place one day: inherit this estate and loom over the shorter lives of less favoured people." The story winds its unhurried way to a dramatic conclusion, although a subplot involving a girl who comes between the two friends never quite comes into focus.

A lyrical and evocative portrait of a Sri Lankan boyhood friendship and the life lessons that came with it.

Kirkus Reviews