PositiveBookforum...The novel’s voices are distinct, but they all flash with the hot mirages of adolescence—all four kids see with the hard certainty of desire things that are and aren’t there ... Devi’s novel is of a piece with an important strand in postcolonial feminist writing that locates the central tragedy of survival in the necessity of repeated leave-takings, which are always acts of betrayal—betrayal of home, of history, of nation, of those who stayed ... The challenges of getting Devi’s tropical-guttural-teenage mood right are considerable, but Zuckerman’s translation is confident and accomplished, capturing the marine clarity of the prose without losing any of its poetic heat.
