Sekaran makes no easy judgments. She does the hard work of a thorough fiction writer and presents flawed characters aching with humanity ... This novel takes its time, and it could probably be shorter without losing much of its impact. But Sekaran’s prose is swift and engaging, her storytelling confident enough to justify the scenic route. She takes us from rural Oaxaca to a Berkeley sorority house; from a Silicon Valley tech campus dripping with money to the shadowy nightmares of immigrant detention centers. There’s a rich secondary cast — Kavya’s relationship with her mother Uma could sustain a novel on its own. It’s easy to imagine the lives of these characters even off the page. Lucky Boy pulses with vitality, pumped with the life breath of human sin and love.
Lucky Boy is both a contemporary page-turner (in the model of Chris Bohjalian’s novels) and a model of delicate, artful writing that lets us see an entire world — contemporary Berkeley, or, rather, two different versions of it — from its characters’ eyes. And its descriptions of the emotional rush of parenthood are often strikingly lovely.
...[a] sweeping, deep and strikingly compassionate second novel ... Topical and timely, but thankfully neither pedantic nor preachy, Sekaran's book invites the reader to engage empathetically with thorny geopolitical issues that feel organic and fully inhabited by her finely rendered characters. Because of the way Sekaran examines the vagaries of economic inequality and the messiness of love in addition to the intricacies of immigration and adoption, Lucky Boy would make a promising pick for a book club. The circumstances feel well-researched, but Sekaran never lets that research get in the way of what is, at its core, a gripping story.
Shanthi Sekaran has drawn the truest map of incipient motherhood I have yet read. She gives voice to every anxiety, every fierce need, capturing the vulnerability of immersing one’s self in love for a child ... Rarely does a novel set in the Bay Area do justice to this place without becoming either self-satisfied or satirical. The Berkeley of Lucky Boy is a loving mix of town and gown, progressive politics and serious privilege ... Upon the birth of Soli’s son, Sekaran’s evocation of the sublime terror of parenthood is unmatched ... The novel isn’t perfect, stumbling sometimes in the details as it reaches for breadth...in the brutish monotony of her imprisonment, Soli narrows into a character more symbolic than individual, a circumstance with a human face. But these off notes do not sour the engrossing and wrenching story of the heartfelt fight over the fate of one lucky boy.
Sekaran does not offer easy answers about where the boy belongs. Readers may find themselves rooting for Soli to be reunited with her son, while also hoping Kayva is able to adopt Ignacio. The book's ambiguity forces the reader to wrestle with questions about family, nationality and belonging ... Lucky Boy is an ambitious novel that braids together two complex stories about family and parenting and also takes on the issues of immigration, class privilege and mass incarceration. Though her plot falters toward the end of the novel, Sekaran's characters are drawn with such deep compassion that the reader will stick with the book all the way to its somewhat outlandish conclusion.
If readers think they can sense what’s coming, they’re right. But in Shanthi Sekaran’s novel Lucky Boy, she tackles these topical issues with a beautiful sense of storytelling and character ... Author Sekaran succeeds in having readers root for both women and against a system that seems to punish them at the same time. This is a story that feels real and well-drawn, in part because it’s a scenario that has happened in the past — and will happen again.
Lucky Boy explores how innocent lives, especially those of children, can irrevocably change because of reckless decisions and complicated systems … This erroneous portrayal of the foster care and adoption process is only one example — albeit a significant one — of how Lucky Boy is rife with generalities and stereotypes. The novel’s plodding and stilted prose is laden with melodrama, flat metaphors and odd phrasing … Although Soli and Kavya’s experiences and losses evoke a reader’s compassion and sympathy, Lucky Boy doesn’t find its focus and footing to succinctly convey how different paths and obstacles to motherhood shape one’s identity.
